First Kisses
by deepandlovelydark
Summary: Just how does a would-be globetrotter end up running a coffee shop, anyway? Prequel to "Second Chances".
1. Lemon Tree

"There's two kinds of people in life, Bud," his Grandpa Harry had said once, on a fishing trip. "Leaders and followers."

"What if you don't want to be either?" MacGyver had asked, hands busy retying a favourite trout fly. "What if you'd rather just be a loner, by yourself?"

Harry had shaken his head. "Can't get away from people altogether, 'less you want to go be a hermit. I'm not saying one's better or worse than the other, now. But they are different. And to my way of thinking, you're cut out to be a follower. You'll be smart enough to do anything you want, but you're going to want someone else to tell you what it oughta be."

(He remembers being unconvinced of this at the time, having a few chemistry projects in mind that his mother had banned him from even attempting.)

"And since you're going to be that sort, and liable to give in just to be nice...a word of advice. Mind you get a few opinions first, before you do anything drastic in life. And I don't mean in your workshop."

"I guess so," he'd said, far more interested in fish movements. "Okay, I'll try and remember that."

(A few weeks later, Harry had packed up and left Minnesota for good. Everybody had been so surprised.)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Eight years later, MacGyver finds himself trying it out.

"What do you think about Ellen?" he asks his mother, watching her momentary confusion (it is a little peculiar, having a girlfriend with the same name).

"Oh, she seems nice enough. Like most of your friends."

Most of, meaning to exclude Jack Dalton. Though he's settled down a lot lately, if only because he's afraid of getting left behind while everybody else graduates.

"Yeah, but...I mean, for real. I think she's kind of serious."

"And do you think you might be serious too?"

"Uh. Maybe?"

His mother smiles, and says the usual things about calf love; but what sticks with him is that first thoughtless, honest flash of joy in her eyes. Pride and pleasure, that her son's found himself a sweetheart.

(Ellen MacGyver had always been a romantic. Even more so, after she'd lost hers.)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"What's love like?" he asks Allison, on their weekly telephone call. "I mean, the kind of love you and Michael have."

There's a wail in the background. "Sorry! Your nephew needs feeding- what is it you're asking, love? Love is when you know all the other person's flaws, and you can still live with them at the end of the day. Or not, if you're Michael and keep getting yourself arrested at nonviolence marches- love is when you're willing to put up with all that, however exasperating your husband's getting!"

"Uh, why do you?"

"Because it's love. And because next time, he's promised to look after the baby while I go out and get arrested. Look, will you get mom on the phone? I can't remember her recipe for zwieback."

MacGyver does so, while considering. He knows Ellen's flaws pretty well, he thinks; she swears a lot because her dad does (that's kinda cool), has tried liquor a couple of times (well, he has too). And as she's said herself, she's kinda bothersome about wanting constant reassurance. Steady love, because with the number of girlfriends her dad brings home and then discards, she's always been afraid of being left alone.

But then, she knows perfectly well that he's never dumped a girl in his life. They always dump him first.

So that part's probably all right.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"You'll regret this for the rest of your life," Mike says promptly.

Mac's regretting something more immediate at the moment; the height of the tree they're climbing. Why does he let her talk him into these things?

"C'mon. Even if you don't want to go traveling like me, at least get yourself out of this poky town! I mean, every teacher in school says you should go to college."

"I know, I know…but there wasn't enough money to send both of us. And Allison's getting more out of it than I would have."

"So join the army. Go to college on the GI Bill."

"You know how I feel about guns. That's something me and Ellen agree about, anyway…and someone has to help out with the coffee shop. And if I'm going to be staying here, why shouldn't I get married?" He shudders. "Isn't this high enough?"

"Oh, well, if you insist." Mike settles in the fork and wraps an affectionate arm around him.

Maybe he'd take her more seriously, if she didn't nurse such a crush on him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Hypothetically, but…would you want to take my name?" he asks.

Asking, because he's more than usually attached to it- the Scottish rhythm sticks out, among all the Scandinavian ones- and he treasures the uniqueness. Maybe more than he should.

"Of course I will," Ellen says, with her softly imploring look. The one that made him notice her in the first place, looking like she needed help. And him coming to the rescue, her brave white knight.

Of course, he can't deny her after that.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Fishing, again. One sport he and Jack can agree about whole-heartedly.

"She'll kiss me at the homecoming," Mac says. "The favourite couple always does, under the spotlight…what if I get it wrong?"

"You'll be fine," Jack tells him, leaning comfortably against the stern. "It'll be just like kissing her the rest of the time, only…well, with an audience."

"But I haven't kissed her yet! I don't want to be- you know. Presumptuous."

"Then you have a lot of catching up to do," Jack says, mischief in his eyes. "You're gonna need to practice."

"Practice how?"

"Doesn't count if it's a guy," Jack says, and kisses him.

Too much. Way too much- he'd always thought that kissing would be romantic, not soggy, with too many teeth and Jack's tongue licking his, eww-

Mac breaks off, spluttering. "That was awful! I didn't think it'd be- all wet! And sticky!"

"Aren't you glad you didn't try it for the first time in front of the whole school? Mac, lemme tell you, you got no natural technique whatsoever. You need some remedial, and fast."

Their fishing spot's very secluded, which is why it's their favourite. Nobody's gonna catch them here.

"I guess. But only for Ellen's sake. She'd be so miserable if I mess it up."

"For Ellen's sake," Jack agrees. And leans in for another kiss, before Mac can notice his eye's twitching.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

So his kiss with Ellen at the homecoming dance, as all their schoolmates cheer them on, isn't MacGyver's first. Or second. Or maybe even the twentieth.

But it's perfect.

Mission City's perfect couple.


	2. Penny

White chrysanthemums.

It isn't Penny Parker's first memory; that's a recollection of staring hard at her feet, one with a sock and one without, and being very puzzled by the difference. Not even her first good memory, because there's some dusky faded ones. Snowfall, sweet salty taffy, the soft grey flannel of her nanny's dressing gown- the second one, the only one she'd really liked. Her mother nodding with amused pride, as she lisped out the difference between fiction and non-fiction to a librarian at a quite impossibly tall desk. But none are nearly so lovely as the chrysanthemums.

Creeping away from her new nanny, who'd been talking to big booming Aunt Betty. (Had there been a wink, from under an outrageous cherry-covered hat? Older Penny is almost sure there was.) She'd trotted off, to go find out everything about Minnesota. Lots smaller than Boston, she remembers thinking. Quieter. Prettier grass.

"Penelope! Penelope Parker!"

Older Penny feels a little guilty, remembering the young nanny's cry of fright for her lost charge. Young Penny had just looked around for the first hiding place she could find, pushing two chubby hands against an unlocked door. Into wonderland.

A friendly, creaky floor good for hands as well as feet (honey-coloured; Mac's own recipe for varnish). Big black tables and chairs, with lots of cushions (antique wrought iron, made by one of Mission City's retired blacksmiths.) Paintings of lakes and trees (Ellen's watercolours), hung against the wooden walls. A fireplace, a drinks workshop (she never gets out of the habit of calling the counter that, not after seeing how much it makes Mac laugh.)

And a big picture window, through which she can see her nanny looking for her.

In the corner is the biggest bunch of white flowers she's ever seen, all lacey like her dress. They make a safe little nook just her size; she crawls inside to wait. She's very good at waiting, with all the tests her parents make her do.

Happy laughter wakes her: Penny rubs her eyes and peeks out of the flowers. People all around, dressed in such lovely clothes. A great big cake, topped with a silver bell that rings out whenever someone touches it. A young man, kissing a lady in white.

"You'll have to sit in the booth, of course," an older woman tells them briskly. "Together, you know."

"Just like always," the young man says, smiling. "Only different now, huh?"

She nods at him, delighted.

Penny doesn't think they've seen her, until the young man turns his head just so, and plucks her out of the flowers.

"Now I don't recognise you! And I thought I knew just about everybody in Mission City by sight, so where did you come from?"

"She's probably the Parker child," the lady says, kneeling down next to them. "Betty Parker's great-niece. I expect you'd like a piece of cake, wouldn't you?"

"Cake isn't healthy," Penny tells them. (What silly grown-ups don't know that?) "So I never have any," she adds, proudly.

"Why, you brave little dear! All of five years old, and you've never had any cake?"

"Four. I'm four."

"I was gonna say we'd better find her parents, but sheesh," the young man says. "Let's pretend we thought she was a flower girl and spoil her rotten. Or just say she's ours."

"Fancy explaining that to your mother. Married this afternoon, and a four-year old daughter already?"

"We'll just say she's a fast developer."

"I'm not," Penny insists. "I'm awfully slow. Everybody thinks so."

"Worse and worse," the lady says. "I'm sure we don't."

"I'll tell you a secret," the young man says impishly. "In Mission City, today is topsy-turvy day. And do you know what happens on topsy-turvy day?"

"No."

"Everything's backwards and upside-down. So cake's good for you, and you're clever. No matter what anybody else says."

Penny thinks about this, hard. "So my dress is black?"

"Uh-huh."

"And we're sitting on the ceiling?"

"Sure thing."

"And the bride kisses the best man instead of the groom?" somebody asks.

(It's funny remembering Jack Dalton like that, too young to even wear a moustache yet).

For his pains, he gets two cushions thrown at him.


	3. Ellen

_Author's Notes: early '70s_

He kisses her without prompting, and never complains when her meat jello goes wrong. But going out into the cold every morning, while she drowses in a warm bed? No surer sign of love than that.

(She isn't Ellen; that name is his mother's, always. She can't be MacGyver, though her husband goes by Mac these days to forestall confusion. Between the two of them she's blotted out, and shelters behind her namelessness with pleasure.)

The coffee shop had always been a haven for her in high school, a comforting place of sweet tastes and companionship. Now it's the home she always craved; the mother she never had; and a husband with endless love in his heart.

She rises in plenty of time for the breakfast rush, smiling at every familiar customer. Coffee, milk, sugar. Karen Carpenter's soft soothing voice on their record player. Making change, running out of muffins. Persuading people to take cookies instead.

And then, just as the shop's emptied and she's taking a breather, the door chimes and her husband steps over the threshold.

"Oh, you're home! I thought you'd be hours yet, getting gas for the car."

"So did I. But Jim Larsen remembered that time I fixed his snowmobile for free, and he let me have a few gallons on the sly…so I'm back early." He sweeps her up, kisses her. "And my lovely, clever wife can get on with planning that mural she's going to paint. Have you decided what the design's going to be yet?"

"I think Mission City itself. In winter time, with a blanket of snow on the ground, and smoke coming from the chimneys. Maybe a meat raffle going on at the church…everything we love about home so much."

Time was when she couldn't have said a thing like that, without seeing a little quiet regret in Mac's eyes; but there's none of that now. He's content, just like her.

"Sounds wonderful," he whispers, and starts kissing her in earnest. So rude, and flamboyant, and delightful.

Of course, that's just when Mike Forrester has to walk through their door…

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Mike's return means that they have their foursome back. She treats everyone to steak dinners that night, with off-handed generosity.

(Threesome. It was the three would-be adventurers for a long time, before Mac invited her into the group; Ellen's never quite felt she belonged.)

"You wouldn't believe what you're missing out there," Mike says, digging into her food with gusto. "Glam and danger, and sometimes you get to make the world a better place." She winks at Mac. "To say nothing of all the pretty girls."

"I'm a happily married man!"

"And I'm trying to be responsible these days," Jack chimes in. "Planes are expensive. I can't be wasting all my money on good-looking broads."

"Not even in your thirties yet, and you're already a couple of old fogies," Mike says, with pity in her voice.

Jack laughs. Mac's face is unreadable, at first; but he turns his wedding ring round and round on his finger, and smiles. "If it's so good out there, what are you doing back here?"

"Freelancing," Mike explains. "My editor says he'll start me on headliners, if I can deliver a real eye-opener of a story- and I've had one just waiting in my back pocket. A cute little Minnesota town, built to cater for a federal correctional institute-"

"Oh, that's not fair," Ellen pipes up (to her own surprise). "The city was here long before that."

"Town at best," Mike says, rolling her eyes. "I've seen cities that make Minneapolis look like a ghost town, this is nothing by comparison. But okay, so Mission City used to be this independent frontier beholden to nobody. It sure isn't now- just look at Mac here. Who's your best customer?"

"The prison," Mac agrees. "I drive out with the coffee urns every morning, pick up the empties every afternoon- they could make it themselves, but my mother's done it for them so long they probably don't even have a percolator."

"There you go. Crazy little contrast, isn't it? Perfect material for a nice piece of Tom Wolfe new journalism."

"You're not making it sound nice," Ellen says. "Not that we're ashamed of it, but…"

"We're a little ashamed," Jack says, emptying his wine glass. "The crud at the heart of our all-American town, the raw meat that keeps blood and less salubrious liquids pumping through our collective guts."

"I'm cutting you off," Mac tells him, plunking the bottle out of reach. "When you start waxing poetic, I know you've had too much."

"Me, waxing poetic? And who is it who bought an anthology of the stuff at the bookshop last week?"

"I was flipping through it and saw a poem called 'Notes from a Letter to Ellen'," Mac says. "Of course I had to buy it after that."

"And I've been reading it to him, at nights."

"You two are kinda cute together," Mike admits. "Maybe you're not such a bad match as I'd figured."

She switches topics then, to the glories of Southern California, and the time she stole a camel in Kuwait, and whether Mac can smuggle her into the prison without anyone noticing.

But Ellen finds herself feeling curiously validated.


	4. Allison

_three months on_

"Don't feel bad about it," her brother always tells Allison, when she comes home for visits. "If it was only going to be one of us at college, I'm glad it was you. And one of these days- maybe when I've invented something really spectacular and we're rich, Ellen can have her art school and I can try for my chemistry degree…"

Knowing that she'd never have met Michael otherwise does help, in a half-guilty way; she can't imagine life without him, or her two darling babies.

And yet, and yet…

"I wonder if you'd be getting more out of my life than I am," Allison says (the quiet mid-afternoon lull; she's helping little Christopher knock over and rebuild endless block towers). "A degree, and no end of anti-nuke rallies, and nonviolence marches are all very well, but I still wonder."

"He's hardly likely to do any of that in Mission City, thank goodness," Ellen observes. "What's there to protest?"

"The prison, maybe?" Mac says, bouncing baby Becky on his knee. "I wonder how Mike's piece turned out. Never heard anything about that."

"Write her and ask?" Allison suggests. "What was her last forwarding address?"

"She didn't leave one this time," Mac says. "To be honest, I've been sort of worrying about her." He frowns for a moment, until Becky's happy burbling distracts him.

"Maybe she's still in prison," Ellen laughs. "For her research."

"I don't like the sound of this," Allison murmurs. "Running up against the Establishment can be a dicey proposition."

"But she's all right if she doesn't do anything wrong, right?" Mac points out.

"Which may be quite an assumption, if she's the danger-happy Mike Forrester I remember…"

"She reshingled the roof for me before she left, just to rub it in about not being afraid of heights. Or hammers."

"So, that's a yes."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Is he all right? I mean, really," Allison asks her mother later.

"I think so- he's very determined to make sure I never work too hard. Of course, sometimes I get around him anyway."

Allison smiles; the family work ethic is something between a joke and an addiction (except for Mac, funnily enough, who's always fluctuating between frenzied activity and sofa-lazing). "Not too often, I hope."

"Not too often. And Ellen helps as well- she's such a good sport, it's wonderful to see her gaining self-confidence. He couldn't have married a sweeter girl. Sometimes we gang up on him and insist that he enjoy himself in the workshop for a few hours."

"One of these days, he'll blow up the world with that chemistry set of his."

"Or save it," her mother rebukes her.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Michael? So glad to hear from you, honey."

"Uh-huh. Yes, Chris is going through a stage of being fascinated with shoes. Keeps drawing pictures…of course, they are rather easier to see, at his height. And Becky's fine, everyone's doing their best to spoil her rotten. I'll have a buckyball for a daughter by the time we get back to Seattle- oh, don't even try going serious on me, you laughed!"

"Mmm hmm. All my love back to the commune. And tell Karen that her brownies are in the freezer…"

"One more thing. Can someone get in touch with Alexander? Only Mac says that Mike Forrester's vanished into thin air, and if anyone's tapped into the media grapevine, you know it'd be Alexander."

"Thanks, love. Be home soon, I miss you."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Thinking about children yet?"

"Believe me, we've tried often enough." A wry smile: Ellen always did call a spade a spade, Allison recalls. "But it's just not happening."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"It's all right," Ellen says warmly. "At least we have each other. That's enough."

But it rather spoils the joke for her later on, when Mac's kidding her about the children.

"I mean, two of 'em already? Sure you don't want to let Ellen and I have this one for a keepsake?"

For a moment, as she watches her brother cuddling Becky to his heart, Allison's almost tempted to say yes.


	5. Mac

When Allison calls to confirm that no one's heard of Mike in months, Mac finds himself going to work on the problem with weird self-confidence.

He doesn't say anything to Sergeant Olson, just asks if he can have a look at the arrest records to match up some suspected thefts from the shop. There's her name down, for possession and intent to distribute, and malicious destruction of property (property being the back records on juvenile delinquents, he's amused to see). Mission City has an arrangement with the FCI, to hold anyone charged with a felony while they're awaiting trial…so she made it into the prison, at least.

He doesn't go anywhere near the place for a few days, enlisting his mother to take over the coffee deliveries. (It's a good way of letting her work off some energy, and Ellen loves her sleep.)

He does ask both of them if he's doing the right thing.

"Don't, honey," Ellen implores. "We're so happy- I couldn't bear it, if anything went wrong."

"I think you're old enough to make your own decisions," his mother says. "And your own mistakes."

Well. A boy should always listen to his mother.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It's kinda disappointingly easy to smuggle himself in. Everyone's always so happily distracted by the coffee- and even if someone does notice, the guards are used to seeing him 'round the place. Mac has no trouble getting to the laundry for a guard uniform.

Disguise next. Quite a bit of Ellen's makeup, to give him a sunless pallor. An application of cotton wool to change his jawline, like Jack had shown him once for a Halloween party; and what's more painful but convincing than either, cropping his hair to a neat crewcut. The whole town knows he's worn the same long mop for years. Nobody's ever going to recognise him like this, even if they see him; and with luck, they won't.

Then it's just a matter of curling up under a pile of scratchy blankets. He goes to sleep, trusting instinct to wake him if anything should happen. It doesn't.

Simplicity itself at nightfall, to calmly help himself to a sandwich and start rifling through the prisoner records- well, at least it's simple for someone who stole a peek at the guard schedule. No, there's more to it than that; he's keenly alert, awake in a way he's never been before. Nobody ever mentioned that fear was going to feel this good. Even better than hockey.

Michelle Forrester. He pulls the file out, flips through it as fast as calf-skin gloves will allow. Brought in on such and such a date, incited a riot to strike for better living conditions (that sounds like Mike, all right), punished with solitary confinement…

His heart starts thumping at the details. Weeks kept alone in a tiny cell, hardly any light or food- how could all this be happening in America? So close to Mission City's hospitable friendliness?

("Haven't you read any of my letters?" he can all but hear Allison saying. "What do you think I've been protesting? The Establishment that lets this sort of thing happen!")

Mac flips back. Here's her cell number. He has to find her.

It isn't the right decision, but he can't do anything else.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

There are people screaming.

There are a great many people screaming, and he wants to save all of them but he's only got enough time to cut open this one door with his oxy-gasoline torch (expensive, but small and discreet).

"Mike," Mac whispers as he enters. "Mike, are you okay?"

There's a body lying, not on the bed but under it. He doesn't think it's asleep.

"It's me. Mac- MacGyver. Please tell me you're okay."

He pulls the door to and gets down on his knees, holding a light to her face. Her eyes follow the movement only sluggishly, with catatonic dullness.

"I gotta get you out of here," he mutters.

Hard work, getting her upright and to the cell door, but he manages it- whereupon she sobs and dives straight back in. Huddling in the corner, trying to make herself as small as possible.

"Too much space out there," Mike whispers. "Too much space."

"Please! I gotta help you!"

For a moment, there's a flicker of intelligence in her eyes. She crawls across the floor to the bed again, taps on it.

"What? Am I looking for something?"

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Here: thin sheets of paper, rolled up inside the bed leg. Mike keeps tapping while he reads them, with a sickening monotony. The proposed article of her prison experiences, her loopy flowing hand narrowing to tightness as she ran out of paper and sanity. A reporter's meticulous chronicle of her own disintegration.

The last note: "I can't seem to remember sky, now. Or why I wanted it."

He tries one last time to drag her out of the cell, but she whimpers and won't come. All he can do is tuck her last article safely in his pocket.

Mike doesn't even seem to notice, when he leaves.


	6. Ellen, again

"You did it for love, didn't you?"

Mike Forrester's last article has caused a firestorm of controversy. National headlines, people fascinated and outraged and titillated, Mission City undergoing a nine days humiliation.

For once, the Establishment's listening (is it only as a distraction, from the the ever-more-obvious Beltway corruption?) Studies on solitary confinement, and a Congressional panel, and a pardon for Mike (what's left of her given up to her grieving parents, who move quickly and don't leave word). In six months, the FCI will close. Only the auxiliary establishment for local criminals to be kept up.

 _You've ripped the heart out of this town. During the worst recession in years, we're about to be thrown into that turmoil with no defense, but- it was because you loved Mike, wasn't it?_

Insane of him to do it, but she'll always forgive him too much love. Just the same way she can forgive him Jack Dalton.

"You sent the article to her editor, because you hated what they'd done to her."

"I'd have done it whether I knew Mike or not," Mac returns. "Because it was the right thing to do."

"We'll lose the coffee order. And Mission City's never going to recover, not in a hundred years."

"We let this happen. Collectively. Good riddance."

And her world simply falls apart. Because she'd only love him more, for love; but this isn't love. This is cold, cruel justice, the kind that sweeps away without caring that it tears a community apart. Not kind. Not nice. Her own sweetheart Mac, when push comes to shove, turns out to be someone she never knew at all.

It takes a long time for her to gather her courage. It takes years, and the death of his sweet mother, and the forcing of endless petty quarrels, and a bankruptcy, before she can bring herself to do it.

But this is the night Ellen MacGyver decides to leave.


	7. Penny, again

Penny doesn't think it's much fun, being back in Boston again. Their boring brick house. Sidewalks. School's fun, now they're finally letting her go. Other kids to play with, and when there's a test they take it together. But she keeps bringing home report cards marked with Bs and Cs, so after a while it isn't.

"There must be something wrong with her," her father insists to the doctors. "She doesn't read, she doesn't remember. She spells her own name wrong. Don't tell me that's normal."

"I thought I'd have a child, not a-" her mother begins, and always stops there.

One of her nannies had told her once: "Children should be seen and not heard." In a moment of exasperation, and it hadn't pleased her parents. Next week she had a new one.

But young Penelope can see the logic of it; if she keeps quiet, she won't say anything stupid and disappointing. It's just she's never been able to take the advice to heart before. Words keep bubbling up inside her, and they have to go somewhere.

Now, though, she has somewhere. A secret place inside her, where people talk more slowly, and don't mind when she takes a while to explain herself.

It keeps her safe for the next few years, while she sees the therapists and plays with coloured blocks, and fills in circles with pencils. Some of it is what she remembers, some of it she imagines. Some is what she sees. Her Aunty Betty's great big house, full of friendly ghosts. A pine forest to get lost in, with a red covered bridge. A bakery with every kind of cake ever. A beautiful theatre (she knows Mission City doesn't have one really, but that means she can think up the nicest one she likes). She can wander about, talking about anything she wants to.

One summer morning, eight-year old Penelope wakes up with an idea.

It takes a while for anyone to notice, but they do eventually. Then there's all the same scolding and teasing and crying as always, but this time it's because she's doing it on purpose. That makes all the difference.

"What about a trip to the Science Museum? You love that," her mother says.

She does. There's a show about lightning there, and a man who explains electricity. The same speech over and over, twice a day. He never says it wrong. But then, he's clever too. He knows how to improvise when someone asks him a brand-new question. Improvisation was a very long word to memorise, but she wanted to know that one. It's about acting. She thinks she'd be very good at that, she's had lots of practice.

"Just tell us you want to go, and we'll go. Say it out loud, Penelope. Say anything."

She makes the words go out to her secret place, a pretty little coffee shop covered with white flowers, and keeps her mouth firmly shut.

After a week of silence, her parents try a spanking ("But it's so old-fashioned, Harry." "That's why you'd better do it; we don't want her to get the wrong ideas about permissible male violence.") That makes her cry, but crying doesn't count, and they know it.

By the end of the second week, her Aunt Betty arrives. (The only time in her life that she ever left Minnesota, Penny thinks.)

"I'm at my wit's end," her father says. "If she was just slow, or just impossible, but both at once?"

"Now then, Penny. You'll say something to your dear old Aunt Betty, won't you?"

"Chrysanthemums," Penelope announces. With her very best diction. Diction is another acting word.

For a little while she's made everyone else speechless, too.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I know it's the '70s, but it's- I'm- I'm just an unnatural mother, I know."

Her parents are crying. Penny feels sort of sad for them.

"You made a mistake," Aunt Betty says, as quietly as she ever does (which is still loud enough that the maid gasps.) "You and Harry weren't ever meant to be parents, you're supposed to work together in that laboratory of yours. Go find the next big atom that's going to blow us all up."

"That's not-" her father starts.

Aunt Betty waves him silent. "Count yourselves lucky! It isn't everyone who has an obliging old aunt to take in their stray child. Just don't do it again."

They're starting to look hopeful.

"If only she'd been- brighter," her mother says. "If I could have taught her anything..."

"And that is exactly what I was talking about. You don't put conditions on a child's love."

"Just for the summer, then. At least, at first."

"Write to us every week," her father says to Penny. "If you ever want to come home, we'll come fetch you right away."

"We do love you," her mother says. "Penelope, you know we do. We've worried about you so, we really have."

She says goodbye to them, eventually. At the airport.

(She knows she won't ever have to come back, by then.)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I remember you," the barista says, at the Chrysanthemum Cafe. "Penny, wasn't it? Penny Parker?"

Penny nods; and starts to talk as though she'll never stop.


	8. Becky and Penny

_Ten Interesting Facts about Mission City_

 _1\. People from Mission City are called Missionaries, just like the ones who go to Africa and everything. Only mostly they stay home instead._

 _2\. It was founded in 1895, as a logging town. So that's why there aren't any trees anymore, except behind the hill at my house._

 _3\. There was going to be an electric railroad connecting Mission City to the Twin Cities, but then the company ran out of money, so there wasn't._

 _4\. The government was having a competition for what town they should put a new prison in. Mission City wanted it the most and said we could give them the land for the cheapest, so we got it._

 _5\. Mission City's other industry was bootlegging alcohol down from Canada, during Prohibition. My Aunt Betty Parker was the only girl bootlegger, but she was the best one._

 _6\. Also she made her own hooch in a still in the basement. And she still does whenever there's a party in town._

 _7\. The third mayor of Mission City was Stace MacGyver. He was a Scottish immigrant and used to build ships in Glasgow, but he didn't like the sea so he moved as far away from it as he could._

 _8\. The Stuart family were town blacksmiths for years and years. They used to tell people they were related to the Scottish kings, but it probably isn't true._

 _9\. The Chrysanthemum Cafe was started in 1930, the year they started building the prison, so that there would be hot coffee for all the construction workers._

 _10\. The prison closed in 1973. Everybody is still mad about this._

"Teacher said I couldn't put my list on the wall like everybody else's," Penny reports tearfully. "Even though I made sure to spell everything right, and it's all true. Some of the other kids just made stuff up."

Aunt Betty laughs, in that loud way that means somebody's in trouble. She doesn't think it's her, though. "We'll see about that!"

They go down to the school, and talk to Principal. Aunty Betty talks about making a donation to the school, to cover the choir's annual outing. That makes him very happy.

"Oh yes, there's one more thing. I hear that there's going to be a school celebration night in honour of the town's founding. I'd like one of the teachers to read my niece's essay out loud, I feel it's a very perceptive piece."

"Of course!" Principal says heartily. "I'm sure I have every confidence in young Miss Parker."

But it causes an awful ruckus that night when Miss Saperson, blushing rosily, reads off the list in a very faltering voice.

Penny can't understand why.

After all, everything in it is perfectly true- and isn't that what matters?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I hate this stupid coffee shop. I hate it!"

Wonderingly, Penny goes round the back of the place, down the gently rolling slope to the garden and chicken coops. (She's walking home from school, on account of having forgotten today is Saturday). Little Becky Grahme is sitting on the stone wall, throwing grain at the ducks and scowling.

"I think it's the nicest coffee shop in the whole world," Penny says loyally.

"Unca Mac doesn't," Becky says, full of five-year old injustice. "He hates it too. And we came all this way, and I wanted a story from him, and he can't tell me one because he's busy waiting on customers. If he didn't have a coffee shop he could tell me a story."

Ooh. A solo performance! Her very first!

"I'll tell you a story. Any kind of story, what would you like?"

"It's our story," Becky says, still scowling. "With the smartest princess ever, and she makes all kinds of things in her kingdom, like an ice cream machine and a rocket horse and stuff. Unca Mac's the only one who tells it right. You can't."

Audiences are hard. But good performers don't let that distract them.

"I could tell a different kind of story about her. Like if she went visiting another kingdom, maybe?"

Becky's mouth opens into a little O of surprise. Penny presses her advantage. "I bet she'd just love to talk to another princess. And they can tell each other about things they've discovered, and build something together."

"...maybe."

She doesn't really know how much Mac has taught Becky (Mac can talk about science with anybody), so sticks to stuff that she knows off by heart. How the princesses make a lightning tower, but they're perfectly safe from it as long as they're careful to stay in a special cage...

"Can it be a glass cage? So it'll be pretty?"

"No, they have to make it out of conductive materials. Glass isn't conductive. But I guess they could make it out of gold, so it'd be shiny."

Becky nods vigorously. "Okay. You're smart. Mom tried to tell me a story like this once, but she got all the science wrong, and I had to go get the encyclopedia and show her. Then she got mad."

(It's the first time in Penny Parker's life that anyone has ever called her smart. Twenty years later, when she's a successful Hollywood actress with write-ups in magazines and fans galore, it's still one of her most satisfying performance memories.)

"You know what else would work? You could try silver. That's even more conductive than gold, and reflective enough that you can make mirrors out of it."

It's Mac, still brushing cookie crumbs off his jeans. "I'm sorry I've missed this. Ellen finally got herself out of bed- anyway, I'm on parole now. Nice to hear someone else in Mission City talking science."

Becky brightens up, runs over to hug him. "Hiya! Penny was telling me a story, and I thought it'd be awful. But it wasn't."

He grins. "D'you mind a co-star?"

"Glad to!"

The two of them finish the story together, bouncing ideas back and forth, while Becky listens enraptured.


	9. Penny and Mac and Ellen

"Are you and Ellen really getting a divorce?" Penny asks Mac, while they're out picking blueberries. Everybody else in town is kind of shocked, but she isn't. Lots of Hollywood people do it all the time.

"Mmm," Mac says, wiping juice off his mouth. "Probably."

He doesn't look very happy to be talking about it. "You haven't put any berries in your bucket the whole time. Are you just going to eat every one you find?"

"Might as well. Ellen's on some stupid diet that says she can't eat any fruit. But gets to have steak and all the fresh eggs…I don't know why she's even doing it."

"Because she's in showbiz," Penny says happily. "The Stillman diet, I'm going to go on it too. As soon as blueberry season's over."

Mac snorts. "Newsreader for local broadcast isn't exactly showbiz. I hate that she's having to dig me out of a hole, but...well, I guess the town gossips have mentioned that patent lawsuit I got us stuck in? So much for trying to invent my way into a fortune...I tried coming up with a new kind of boat engine and got nothing but trouble for it. If we lose the coffee shop now, and it's looking like we might if we can't pay off the lawyer fees and court costs and stuff, we're both done for. I guess she feels like she owes me that much, 'fore she leaves."

"That's good. It'd be awful if you went out of business."

"I dream about it sometimes," he says, not looking at her. "That maybe one day I'll just flip the sign to closed and leave the place to rot. Start hiking south. Live off the land, just disappear."

"Without any friends?"

"Penny, tell you the truth I'm feeling kind of burnt out on companionship right now."

"But you're here picking blueberries with me."

"Yeah, well," he says with amusement. "I couldn't let you go out into the woods by yourself, could I? Suppose a bear came and ate you up, that'd be on my conscience."

"What'll you do if we see a bear?"

"Oh, walk away. Slowly. You don't want to rile them up."

Penny shivers. "No, I guess not! But I thought you'd do something wacky. Like invent a contraption. Or a distraction."

"Sometimes, Penny...sometimes simple is best."

He's staring down a deer trail, sort of lost and longing. Like he has it in mind to just start walking right now, and never come back.

Penny takes him by the arm. "Mac? It's getting dark. Maybe we'd better go home."

"Oh! Sorry."

She's almost sorry she's done it. He sounds regretful.

But maybe a little grateful, too.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Ellen's the only professional performer in Mission City, so Penny's been hanging out with her a lot lately. Learning a lot of useful stuff that an actress needs to know, like how to apply makeup (Aunt Betty boasts that she's never worn it in her life). How to smile like you mean it, even when you don't. And also diets.

Of course, listening to her also means hearing a lot of harangues, but Penny knows that's part of showbiz too.

"Driving out at five in the morning, in sub-zero temperatures- is there any vehicle less suited to Minnesota's climate than a jeep, I ask you?" Ellen hisses, as she mixes herself a whiskey-drenched coffee. "Penny, television is a miserable experience. Don't ever do this to yourself. Stick to running your own show."

That's something Ellen keeps saying; that she ought to just stay home, and enjoy the community theatre. Turned out Mission City did have one after all. It just hadn't been used since 1936.

Which is a wonderful opportunity for her! With Aunt Betty's money for financial backing, she's cleaned up the place and has been teaching herself theatricals from the ground up. Starting with acting (naturally), but also casting, script rewrites, box office, even stage carpentry- though with her clumsiness, that one is mostly experience in learning how to delegate. Making a lot of mistakes along the way, but she's learning. Slowly. Last year they did a by-the-book "Romeo and Juliet", and nobody liked it; this year they're doing a performance of "Midsummer Night's Dream" rewritten for midwinter, with local humour and hockey jokes, and that's going down a lot better in dress rehearsals. Improvising quips is a lot of fun.

(One of these days she's going to go to Hollywood; but not until she's tried everything she can here. Running a whole theatre by herself is a pretty unique opportunity for someone still in high school, and probably not one she'll get again.)

Ellen's still complaining, but she's winding down. "...of course I'd rather have just stayed in makeup, but the sooner I can make enough money to get Mac out of this, the better. I'm not staying any longer than I need to, I can promise you that."

"Oh, don't go! I watch you every day," Penny says. (She'd like to say it's because she likes Ellen- and she does- but mostly, it's just instructive seeing how many ways a newscaster can flub her job.)

"Then you're probably the only one."

She's wrong about that, as it happens. Everyone in Mission City watches the news these days, willing her on as she struggles through yet another broadcast. Hoping for the best, of course, but unwilling to miss it should the worst happen.

As they're all doing, that cold February night. When just as Ellen's finishing up, for once with a real and proper smile, someone slips a paper onto her desk.

"We're sorry to report the death of Karen Carpenter, who died at hospital today of cardiac arrest. Aged thirty-two, one half of the popular singing- duo..."

Ellen starts to cry. On air.

The town's very sympathetic after her unceremonious firing. Even Mac's distracted from his malaise, by the task of cheering her up. Penny's as sweet about it as she knows how to be.

But she knows no real performer would slip up like that, however sad she was. The Penny who goes to Hollywood needs to know how to put herself aside, to play whatever the part asks. How to be nice or nasty on demand, whatever she's really feeling.

That might take a while to learn. But then, she's not in any hurry.

(And she finally takes Aunt Betty's advice, and throws out all her diet books.)


	10. Movie Night

_Author's note:_ _Jack Dalton is a rude-minded kinda guy (as we all know), and his chapters are pretty much why I've given this thing a mature rating._

 _Mac's deep guilt complex about dating his best friend was inspired by those fans who insist that people who write slash can't possibly appreciate the integrity of the MacGyver universe- and that's all I have to say about that._

Everyone in Mission City knows the score: Mac's the sober sort, whereas Jack drinks like a fish. Though ever since the divorce, it's been more the other way around- at least, on Tuesdays.

What happens on Tuesdays?

Mac and Jack's movie night.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _February_

"But our birthday was last month. And 'Sunset Boulevard' isn't even a Western!"

"I know, but you try telling Penny Parker anything."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _March_

"I always meant to ask- when you started dying your hair blonde after that crewcut fiasco, was it just because you liked Clint Eastwood's character in the film that much?"

"That'd be silly. I wanted a change, that's all."

"You sure?"

"Okay. Maybe a bit."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _April_

"I roped a steer once. In Texas."

"Jack, I don't mind hearing it again, but why d'you always start out like I've never heard it before?"

"Y'know, drunkenness is supposed to excuse everything."

"Everything, huh?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _May_

"Geez. It would have been my anniversary with Ellen, tomorrow."

"Cheer up. I bought some extra bourbon."

"How much?"

"Will two gallons be enough?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _June_

The first Tuesday in June, Edith orders her mid-morning coffee with something approaching righteous zeal. A real Missionary, in every sense. She is here to save Angus MacGyver from himself.

He's worth redeeming. A regular church-goer, a reliable contributor to charitable causes, and all in all, an upstanding, moral member of the community. Except for these little Tuesday deviancies, and they do seem so out of character.

"Because Hans and I would be happy to have you over for dinner," she says, over her milky drink. "I'm sure it must be lonely for you at nights, without a wife to make you any nice home-cooked meals."

His mouth quirks. "Tell the truth, I'm a better cook than Ellen ever will be. Now if you asked whether I miss having someone to do the hoovering, that'd be a different question."

She won't allow herself to be deterred by his little jokes. "But still, won't you come over? This very night, if you like. I'm planning a lovely piece of brisket."

He looks thoughtful. "Oh, you could probably talk me into that, sure. Only not tonight. I'm always busy Tuesdays."

"Tuesdays were what I had in mind," she says stiffly. "I could perhaps understand if you had nowhere else to turn for friends, but just on this street there's half a dozen respectable families who would be glad of your company. Good, solid people who aren't-"

"Who aren't Jack Dalton, huh? Let me tell you something, Jack might be an incorrigible good for nothing, but he's the most loyal friend a guy could ask for. So you can hint all you like, I'm still gonna go down and see him just as often as I want."

Why must he make this such a blunt, nasty affair? "Poor Ellen," she murmurs.

"What?" he asks sharply.

"There's a great deal of talk at the sewing circle. Whether the divorce was entirely about the bankruptcy, or if it was something- worse. I stuck up for you, of course. I said that you'd show yourself to be normal enough, if only we'd all give you the chance."

"Oh, you didn't need to go to an effort like that. People might love their gossiping, but live and let live, right?"

His voice is calm enough, his expression reserved. She'd almost believe he doesn't mind her words at all.

He turns away from her, fumbles with a teacup. It falls to the floor and shatters.

Almost.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jack starts whistling to himself, off-key, as he bangs the supermarket trolley around a corner. Sarsaparilla, popcorn, margarine. Cheaper than butter, and it melts better too.

Lube. French letters. He's carelessly fucked a lot of people- enough to leave him on tenterhooks, considering this GRID thing that's been making the news- but Mac hasn't. One of several very good reasons for him to stay sober on Tuesdays; he wouldn't trust himself to be careful enough, if he got drunk.

(God knows, Mac isn't careful at all once he's had a few. Another reason not to drink: he doesn't want to ever wake up wondering if he heard a no and decided to ignore it. It's bad enough asking himself that question about the odd one-night stand, let alone his best friend.)

A TV dinner for him, some fried chicken for Mac. Who won't eat at all some nights, depending on how fast he wants to get blotto, but it's just as well to have. For lunch tomorrow, if nothing else.

"Some party you're planning, huh?" the cashier ventures.

"Angling for an invite?" Jack asks cheerily. Almost the right type- tall and a bit athletic, and a face that flickers from withdrawn to smiling in a moment-

The guy draws back, squeaking apologies.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The coffee shop is the obvious place for a tryst. Cosy and warm, full of tasty snacks, and radiating a cheerful, homely atmosphere. Deliberately so: his bread and butter relies on people constantly returning for another hit of caffeine and domesticity.

But Jack's too lazy to stir from home on movie night, and for that Mac is endlessly grateful.

The trailer's exactly what might be expected from someone who has been half-planning to leave next week, for the last fifteen years. A messy scrawl of a place, garbage and clothes and everything piled up higgledy-piggledy. Peeling pin-ups on the walls- always girls, for some reason. A sunset, painted on black velvet (of course it's tacky; of course it's melancholic). The comfiest broken old couch in existence. This place's crazy paving breaks through Mission City's small-town bubble like nothing else, and that always gets him excited.

Like being young again, when he just wanted to get out there and see every country on the map. Love and longing, sex and travel.

Along with Jack, of course.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"So," Jack says, vainly trying to plump up a flattened cushion. "What are we watching tonight?"

Vital question. If it's a Leone, it means Mac actually wants to watch a Western (though they're pretty well aware by now where the slow bits come in, and how to make best use of them). If it's "The Magnificent Seven," that's their ticket for a night of chattiness and giggles. If it's "Butch Cassidy," they won't even pretend to be taking it seriously.

"I dunno," Mac says listlessly, pouring himself a second whiskey. "Why don't you pick for a change?"

He's moving much too fast, for a guy who only indulges once a week. "It depends. Wanna tell me what's bothering you first?"

"Gossip. No, I don't want to."

"Say you tell me anyway."

Mac sighs, settles himself on the couch. "I wish they'd put out 'Badlands'. I loved that film."

"That was set in the '50s, wasn't it? Lots of cars, as I recall."

"But close enough. How about 'Heaven's Gate?' I'm not really in the mood for anything good tonight."

Three and a half hours, sweet lord. "If you say so, sure."

"No. I'm just...oh, hell, I'm not drunk enough yet," Mac says, looking at his bourbon with distaste. "Edith was at the shop today, making insinuations about us."

"Butting in, huh? Rude double entendres are my job," Jack says with a chuckle.

"She was sort of hinting that the town might start getting the wrong idea, if I don't clean up my act. Mostly meaning you."

"Uh-huh."

"It's not the first time I've heard stuff like that, lately...Jack, I'm scared."

"Sure you are. Catering to people like her is what keeps your shop in business. Mac, if you think-"

"I'm scared that I've been stuck in this stupid town for so long, I might talk myself into losing you."

There is a dignified six-inch gap between them, on the sofa. Mac carefully moves himself over, until it disappears.

"Because if I let you go, if I just give in- Jack, help me. I don't want it to be like this, I don't want to need three drinks before I can say I love you."

This isn't the arrangement of words he was expecting.

"Don't let me give you up. Please."

Jack murmurs comforting nothings, runs his hands through a soft mullet while wondering what to do. His gambler's instinct is screaming at him: this is the time to call bluff. All he's gotta do is push a little harder. Be a little more camp, do something really outrageous- and Mac won't have any choice but to close up shop. And come south with him.

Perfect plan. Marred only by one thing: that's all long-term, delayed gratification stuff.

Whereas Mac is sobbing against his shoulder right here and now, and it's breaking his heart.

 _Jack Dalton, you really are an idiot sometimes._

"Mac, it's okay," he promises. "I'll take care of it. Trust me. Everything's going to be all right."

Jack holds his lover close, thin shivery body against his own warm one. Summoning up every bit of reassurance that two decades of roguery have taught him. Tone, more than words. Soothing the mark's troubles, promising the moon. Of course, this time he's using all the tricks just to tell the truth.

Maybe Mac's got a point, about this honesty business. Feels kinda good.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"You said Edith's the ringleader," Jack inquires, as he puts "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" into the player and nestles back next to Mac. "The postman's wife?"

"Yeah."

"Well. Let's see how she copes, once I've turned the genuine hi-fi hundred-proof Jack Dalton charm on her. She oughta be off your back in no time."

Mac starts with spluttering, ends by laughing. "No way! Sixty if she's a day, and all prunes and prisms- I mean, you couldn't possibly enjoy that."

"Sure. You know what, though? You're worth it."

"Oh, this is so screwed up."

"Welcome to my world. Speaking of which..." Jack murmurs, and starts rummaging for the condoms.

They never do actually watch the movie, but that's rather besides the point.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The gossip at the sewing circle doesn't exactly die down, once Edith lets it be known that that Jack Dalton is a perfectly lovely, if roguish fellow. It just shifts into speculative inquisitiveness about where Edith learned that charming style of wearing lipstick, and what Hans is going to do to Dalton if he ever gets 'round to noticing.

Across town, Ellen, née MacGyver, breathes a quiet sigh of relief. It would have done not the slightest good to anyone had she mentioned it, but she can't help being relieved by how matters have turned out.

Because what would Mac even do, without anyone to love?


	11. Jack and Katie

So okay, he loves Mac; but that doesn't mean Jack goes to him for life advice. At least not exclusively. Mac's record on important decisions is about the worst of anybody Jack knows, and that includes his own.

No, when he needs a second opinion he goes to Katie. Owner of the Wingman Bar, a few towns over, one a little bigger and more laidback than Mission City. His usual hunting grounds when he was on the pull, before Mac and Ellen had divorced. Since then he's mostly given up coming; Mac's big on serial monogamy, and it takes too much self-control to just smile and wink at the ladies every time. (One regularly scheduled broadcast a week can get awfully frustrating.)

"Thought you'd have forgotten about me," he says one Monday night, as Katie pours him his regular.

"Jack Junior's father? Now how would I forget a thing like that?"

It's a running gag; she doesn't know or much care which of the several guys she'd had going was the dad. He'd been the only one to offer to marry her afterwards, though. She'd laughed herself sick turning him down ("a half-share in my bar? Not on your life, Jack Dalton!"). But it's been a sort of bond between them ever since. "How's the kid doing?"

"Fine. Fine. One of these days I'll be bringing him into the bar, and then he'll start seeing some life."

She's just the sort to do it, too. It's possible that he doesn't actually know the kind of people who makes sensible decisions; but Katie's utterly happy with her flirtatious, drinks-slinging, drunks-tossing business, and that strikes him as a pretty good metric. "Better watch out. You'll have the whole crowd buying him drinks."

"Then I'll drink them all for him," Katie says. "All right, Jack, what's on your mind?"

"Got sort of a decision to make. I've got an idea. I'd have to raise a little working capital-"

"You better not have me in mind. You get one free drink, not a free loan."

"No, wasn't thinking that," Jack agrees. "Though you did say you liked the looks of my cab. Would it be worth my while scraping off the decals?"

"Could do," Katie admits. "I'm afraid to step into the Bug too hard these days, in case my foot goes through it. But that's your livelihood, isn't it? Whenever your scams fall through?"

"Sure, but I think I got it good this time. Once I have the setup cash, I'll be able to hook in the sucker no problem...now this is the kicker. For my getaway afterwards, I get myself arrested. Really, genuinely arrested, locked up in the slammer for a year or so. The guy's so scared of prison himself, he'll never think anyone would do it on purpose. It's pretty well foolproof."

"You say that about every one of these things."

"And most of them come off, except when I'm running it a little carelessly. This one I won't be careless about. It'll be good enough to buy me a plane, if I play my cards right."

"Not bad if you can do it," Katie allows. "Are you sure about the money?"

"As eggs is eggs, we're talking more dough then I've ever had in my life. Then Mac sells the shop for the first few months of operating expenses, and Dalton Air is all set. Goodbye snow, hello sunshine."

"So what's the kicker? I don't see what you've got to make up your mind about."

"Mac. I mean, it'll be kinda hard on him, and a year's a long time. Suppose I get out and he's gone back to Ellen? Or that I can't get him to go south with a jailbird at all?"

"If he's that willing to leave you, you might as well find that out now. Before you spend any of this windfall on him, for instance. Is that it?"

"Yeah, I can handle the prison part. I've done that often enough. And this might be our only shot at getting out of here," Jack says. "What is it they say, crime or the army or singing? We missed the boat on the army thing, and I sure can't sing."

She laughs. "I'd say, full speed ahead. But if you're going to be out of circulation for a while, maybe stick around tonight. Might as well give you a proper send-off, right?"

"If he hears about this, Mac's gonna be pissed."

"Then make sure he doesn't hear about it, honey. You know where the spare key is."

Aw, heck. Just this once.

It's not like he'll have another shot at misbehaving with a lady any time soon.


	12. Jack and Mac

It's Tuesday night. Wednesday is visitor's day; it'll be the first time he's seen Mac for nearly two weeks. Under the circumstances, Jack reckons, it'd be odder if he wasn't dreaming about the guy- and it's going pretty well. Still in his prison cell, but with Mac nestled safely up against him. Shivering a little, in the blousy air; Jack lets him steal most of the blankets, holds him with sleepy tenderness.

"-no sign of any intrusion here. Are you sure?"

The guard's harsh voice wakes him out of the dream instantly. Only- Mac doesn't disappear.

He's still in his jail cell, and there's a stupidly tall barista underneath him, trying really hard to look like a lump of blankets.

Not bursting out laughing at this point is about the hardest thing Jack's ever had to do; and that Mac's clearly terrified by his suppressed giggles only makes it funnier.

"Nah. Coulda been a rat. Probably was."

"Dalton's stolen another blanket for himself? How many is that now?"

"Four? I don't know how he does it. It's no good taking them away from him, he's like a magnet for creature comforts."

They move on. Mac clamps a hand over his mouth, and doesn't take it off for a solid twenty minutes.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Jack whispers, as soon as he can.

Mac shakes his head slightly. Produces a pocket notebook and a pen.

 _Had to know you were ok. Not like Mike._

 _I'm ok. U crazy?_

 _yes_

Well, that was blunt enough. _U gonna spring me?_

 _No_.

 _Fuck_?

All he gets is a quizzical look. Jack takes a second look at the paper and has to admit that the question mark is more exclamation mark-ish. He rolls his eyes and goes for a kiss, instead.

Mac catches on pretty fast.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"You stole my best SAK, before you left," Mac says the next day. "I'm kinda annoyed about that."

Jack smirks; he'd lifted it rather more recently than that. "You'll get it back. In two years, or a year and a half if I'm on my best behaviour."

"Then do that. It's dull having to watch movies all by my lonesome."

He's still glaring, which is understandable. The Super Tinker is a very sweet model, worth a fortune in the prison economy. He's thinking about renting it out by the day.

"Hey, at least you get your pick. And a decent television. Our model's black and white, and half the time it's busted."

"Maybe I could get them to let me fix that. I'll ask."

This isn't really a line of thinking that Jack wants to encourage. Last night had been a sweet, unexpected surprise; but if Mac keeps hanging around the prison he's going to get himself locked up next, and that's just going to throw off everything.

"It's not that bad…"

"No, no. I'll talk them into letting me do it. You watch."

Oh, geez. This is not good.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Mac does it, too. And the chocolate hidden in the back of the tube melts a bit, but is pronounced edible enough by its sugar-happy consumers. Bribing all and sundry lets him avoid the usual prison squabbling, which is more than worth the price.

Which gives Jack an idea...

 _smuggling = mucho dinero!_

 _'m not a pack mule. No._

 _c'mon, whole prison knows by now. Gotta keep them happy_

 _This is wrong._

 _so is you breaking into a prison every Tuesday! if you're gonna do it, make yourself useful_

 _Maybe I'll stop doing it._

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Ellen's moved back in," Mac says the next day. "We're giving it a try, anyway. I might be busy for a few weeks."

He is, and while he keeps sending care packages, Jack finds himself not a little miserable. Any halfway sane Missionary- well, any halfway sane local would never had let matters get to this point. But now he's out of sight and out of mind, why wouldn't Mac just drift contentedly onwards? Let himself sink deep into Mission City's silence, lost once and for all.

For years now, he's been Mac's lifeline out of that. Loudly and colourfully insisting on an Elsewhere. A bigger and better world than this one little town. Fighting a constant battle to keep his friend's soul stirred up, discontented to be just another anonymous shopkeeper.

(He can leave here, when his jail sentence is done; but what good will that do if Mac doesn't even recognise the prison that's trapped him?)

Jack's never been subject to nightmares before, but he starts having a recurrent one now. Watching Mac lying in a hammock, eyes closed and mouth open and very peaceful, so peaceful he doesn't notice the quiet snow falling. Down and around and covering him from sight, until he's buried deep-

The third night it happens is a Tuesday, and his cellmate crawls into the bunk with him until he stops whimpering. Jack doesn't protest afterwards, though all his chocolate's gone missing the next day.

Mac's there at visitor's hours, next day. "Didn't work out. We couldn't agree what to watch last night, and one thing just led to another...so she's gone. We're not trying that again."

"Ah."

"You don't have to look that pleased about it."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

His nightmares stop. The prison smuggling becomes a very tidy business, to Mac's confusion and Jack's delight. Not as profitable as it could be- he draws a line at drugs, or weapons. Or anything that he thinks could be turned into a weapon, which is an awfully exhaustive list. But it draws a nice sum, one way and another. (The guards have yet to catch on. Mac's very good at what he does.)

Until the night the whole thing just falls apart.


	13. intermission

Mac's already written the first few sentences of the conversation on the writing pad, the way he does sometimes. _Don't touch me._

(His love for his niece is a clean thing. Uncontaminated. Not like what he has with Jack.)

 _Allison's dead. So's Michael, so's Chris. I've got to look after Becky. Staying in Mission City. Keeping the shop._

It's a hard thing, not looking Jack in the face when they're so close; but he manages somehow.

Jack almost snatches the pad from him. _Let me help_

 _No. Going to play it straight now. Every sense._

 _Raised in a commune? Becky prob. saw worse than us when she was 3_

 _Not the pt. Gonna keep her safe. No more smuggling._

It costs him more than he expected to write the next line. _No more movie nights. Clear?_

"I don't want to see you anymore," Jack says abruptly.

Just plain says out loud, not caring who might hear- but that's fair. He nods, keeps his face expressionless.

So Mac's not really sure what Jack's seeing, to lend him that look of stricken horror.

"Oh...dammit, Mac, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. Just- not right now, it's only a few months until I get out. Let me get used to the idea. And if that's the way you want to play it, that's the way it'll be."

 _I'm not going back on this promise._


	14. Chuck

Chuck always keeps a gun out in plain sight, while he's doing the church pantry food distributions Sunday nights. There's too many families in Mission City, not enough donations, and it takes some hard-edged firmness to ration out the food so that there's a little for everybody. Everybody always thinks they deserve help more than the next person; when an argument's gone on too long, he just nudges the gun a bit until they shut up and take their bag of groceries already.

Besides, he's on a tight schedule. It's bad enough for these folks to need the handouts in the first place; he doesn't see any point in shaming them by making them all see who else is broke (the gossips have enough fun speculating about that as it is). So they're staggered out, one every fifteen minutes, so people can get in and out of the church with at least a little dignity.

Next one coming up is Mac. Not that it really is the guy's fault, this time; that patent lawsuit that's been simmering for years has finally settled, and pretty well bankrupted him in the process (that's twice now, come to think of it, and without a wife to help out this time). And Newberry might be crazy as a box of frogs, but he demands payment on time, in cash- so maybe the lawyer isn't as crazy as all that.

On top of that, Mac's sister had died in a car crash earlier this summer, and he's adopted the niece who's the only family he has left...yeah. Pretty tough time of things. Though it's as good as a soap opera for Mission City right now, whether he'll lose the shop or at least give up Becky to social services. The favourite bet is for the start of the school year, before he throws in the towel. Chuck's figuring October.

(He does have more reason than anybody else in town, to remember there's a tough streak hidden inside their soft barista.)

"So how's Becky handling things? I seem to recall that Allison could be quite the worrywort at times."

"God, I hope not. She's had more than enough misery for one summer, I'm not telling her about any of my problems," Mac says. "If I can't keep my own niece from worrying about whether she's going to have a roof over her head next week, I might as well give up raising her now. That's no kind of way for a kid to live."

"Some little old lady's bound to mention your troubles, sooner or later."

"Mmm. Who even buys all that Wonder Bread?" Mac asks, staring at the two white loaves going into his bag with something between distaste and sheer raw hunger.

The man'll be asking questions on his death bed. "Betty Parker has a standing order at the supermarket. Her little contribution to society, she says."

"She could do a lot better than that, if she wanted to...I shouldn't gripe," Mac admits. "Been meaning to ask you something. That jeep of mine- still want it?"

"What?"

"Last summer, remember? You said you wouldn't mind taking it off my hands, one of these days."

Oh, that. Okay, so he had joked about that, but- they've already got two cars, and whatever his teenage son thinks they don't really need a third.

"Didn't Ellen take the station wagon? What are you going to drive?"

"I'll pick up a junker, this fall- you know I can get anything to run. But right now, I've got to pay my coffee supplier, and Newberry's been waiting a month for his fee, and I don't even know where I'm going to get this month's alimony check from...anyway, you said you wanted it, I'm offering it," Mac says, with a brave attempt at defiant indifference. Bit late for that now.

Chuck's still on the verge of saying no, when-

"C'mon. Jesse would have."

And that is hitting below the belt in a big way. That is bringing up the subject that have made the two of them avoid each other for decades, despite living in the same town. Because what happened to Jesse had been an accident on both their parts, but...Mac had taken all the responsibility on himself. Even though he hadn't been the one to fire the gun.

They've been living parallel lives since then, him with his gun shop and a fancy house with the swimming pool out back and a good wife he likes just fine, while Mac's dreams of college and a happy marriage and everything else have crashed and burned. There but for the grace...it's as if his old childhood friend became the scapegoat, carrying all the bad luck for both of them, and he may be a Christian but he has a superstitious fear of having that guilt rebound on him.

But not so superstitious as to lose all his business sense, anyway.

"Three thousand. I'll pay you cash, tomorrow night."

Mac locks gazes with him. It's worth more than that, and they both know it.

"Four thousand," the barista says, cool as winter ice. "And I get to borrow it in a few weeks. Jack Dalton's gonna need a lift from prison."

He doesn't sound angry; Chuck's used to dealing with angry people, anyway. Calm, self-possessed. Focused on survival. With maybe just a tinge of violent, unpredictable insanity creeping in at the edges.

"Okay," Chuck agrees, thoroughly intimidated. And throws in a extra wedge of cheese into the bag, for good measure.

He's better change his wager in that betting pool. Tonight. Cos if that's the way Mac's going to be from now on...well.

Becky Grahme probably doesn't have a thing to worry about.


	15. Pain perdu

Mac's never much liked the coffee shop; but these days it's absolutely maddening.

Rich, tasty fragrances, chocolate and coffee and vanilla. Small talk, fresh baked muffins, the expressive bubbling of the coffee maker, all so friendly and nice and so forth, while underneath he's hurting with hunger and so tired he doesn't know how he's getting by.

Not that he really have a choice. The shop's what lets him look after Becky; he's managed somehow to make sure she's always properly fed, even if he has to cheat himself at breakfast and skip lunch. He'll miss having her around when she starts school tomorrow, but that free lunch is going to be such a weight off his mind. A rather selfish part of him is hoping that she'll bring home an apple or something, once in a while. Not that he'd ask.

Sighing, he reheats a cup of yesterday's unwanted coffee and adds plenty of sugar- the taste's terrible, but the caffeine will do him good and these days he's too famished to toss out anything with calories. Starts fixing up brunch for Becky: a couple of day-old brownies from the shop, some scrambled egg and radish from what's left of their garden (not much, considering how badly it's been mauled by rabbits this year). Floppy slices of white bread, for the inevitable French toast. That should be enough for her until tonight, when he can slip down to the church and get a few more days worth of groceries. Accepting charity is its own kind of humiliation, but he'll do anything for his niece. Anything.

Frying oil, maple syrup. The coffee hasn't done much to quiet the growling noises his stomach insists on making; desperate, he pulls on an extra flannel shirt and refills his cup with water from the tap. At least that'll stop him feeling quite so hollow.

This isn't working, this isn't working at all. He needs to sit down and think up a plan. Get them out of this, somehow.

If he could just think of something besides how damn hungry he is.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

There were three slices in the breadbox last night; she'd checked. Now there's three slices of French toast on her plate.

Becky looks at it glumly. She's got really sick of this stuff, lately, but any other way of eating white bread tastes worse. And Uncle Mac's doing the best he can for her, after all.

Having nightmares, a worried part of her mind whispers. Going without, because you're here.

She'd wanted to come to him so much, after the accident; but now it just feels like she's making everything worse.

"Well, don't let it get cold or anything." He slams a pan noisily into the sink, and drops into a chair.

"Why don't you have a slice?"

It's not the first time she's said that, and Mac gets even more annoyed than usual. "Because I had something earlier. So please, will you eat it and not complain?"

He wouldn't lie to her, but she has a pretty good idea that "earlier" means supper last night, and he'd barely eaten anything then. There's plenty of food right here; but it's for her, so he won't touch it.

She's going to have to trick him into it.

"All right, I won't complain! I'm just not going to eat it, that's all!"

There's a momentary look of longing in his eyes, before he gets control of himself. "Becky. You're a growing girl, you've got to have something-"

"You can't make me!" Becky shouts. It isn't nearly as hard as she'd have thought, with all her pent-up fear for him to fuel it. "I'm sick of French toast, and I'm sick of Minnesota, and if I don't want to eat any of this awful stuff today, then that's my problem!"

She runs for it then, before he can do anything. Runs to her room and locks the door on him. Will he guess the truth? That she's being self-sacrificing, not petulant?

If he does, he'll probably get really mad. And then force her to eat it anyway.

 _Please, Uncle Mac. Please, please, please just think I'm being useless and ungrateful. You need that breakfast so much._

It's weird, hoping this hard that he'll be disappointed in her.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He knows what he needs to do. Go and retrieve Becky, get breakfast into her like a young teenager needs.

Even gets off the chair, a little too quickly; he collapses right back into it with a wince. Faint and giddy. And there's a whole plate, right in front of him. Full of crisp golden egg-laden toast, hot and buttered and syrup-laden.

He could stop himself. He just chooses not to.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It's getting on for three. Her sewing bag's in the other room, she's read about all she can stand for today, and she's starting to get sort of hungry. Not enough to regret doing what she did, but- maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad idea to have pocketed one of those brownies, before getting stroppy.

Oh well. What's done, is done.

Footsteps in the next room. Uncle Mac must be back from wherever he'd got to. She steels herself. Whatever punishment he thinks appropriate, she'll just have to take in stride.

Knock, knock. "Becky?"

He doesn't sound upset. He sounds relaxed, and a little amused. Perfectly sane. ( _Becky, what else would he be?_ )

She opens the door, tentatively. "Unc, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

"It's okay. Don't worry about it, I don't blame you one bit. But d'you think you could help me with something?"

"Anything."

Mac grins, and hands her twenty dollars. "Want to go down to the grocery store? Pick up anything you like. I'd go with you, but the thing is, I've got this deer I have to finish dressing..."

"Oh- Uncle Mac, that's illegal! It isn't even hunting season yet!"

She remembers that smile very well in later years. "Too late now, and anyway it was Sergeant Olson who let me borrow the rifle. I tried to give him a doe in compensation, but he insisted on paying me a fair rate for it...course, it's just as well he did. Plain venison would get dull real quick."

Becky stares at him. "But you hate guns."

"Yeah. But it turned out there was something I hated even more, and that was not being able to take care of you. I need to make sure you're okay, Becky. Whatever that takes."

Utterly at a loss for words, she just hugs him. Smells the faint scent of gunpowder, clinging to his shirt. Blood, and worse.

Her own sweet and gentle storyteller- what's she done to him?

"I didn't mean for you to do anything like this," she whispers. "I didn't."

"I know," he says. Distantly amused, even though he's hugging her back. "Guess I got pretty desperate, after finishing your breakfast. But for the first time in weeks I was clear-headed enough to think up a plan- maybe it wasn't the best one, but I was in a hurry." He lets go, nods at her to follow him down the stairs. "This is gonna be interesting, trying to butcher it. I haven't been anywhere near a deer since Harry was showing me the ropes as an eight-year old."

"You know, Ellen ran me through the whole process a couple years ago. You weren't there, it was that time you'd taken Chris out on a camping trip."

"She always used to go hunting behind my back," Mac says grumpily. "Like she was ashamed to admit it to me, or something...okay, new plan. We'll both do it. But you go down to the grocery and get some belated breakfast first, all right?"

"Okay." She needs time to think this over, anyway.

Everything's worked out. They'll have food for a few more weeks. He's calm and fed, and that frightened look of his has vanished. The one when he was wondering whether he'd have to let her go, the one that scared her. She ought to be glad it's gone.

 _So why does this still feel so wrong?_

"Becky," he says gently, ruffling her hair. "Stop worrying. That's my job."

She stops herself saying anything, just in time. Today he needs a Becky who's relieved and unquestioning and grateful. Someone who'll justify the sacrifices he's made for her with so much pain and effort.

She'll be that for him, then.

It's really the least she can do.


	16. Sublimation

Jack expects a lot of trouble, when his smuggling empire collapses overnight and the care packages stop; but people go surprisingly easy on him. Maybe because of his cellmate's confirmation that Mac's stopped coming. Maybe because, for the first time in his life, he goes so dull that he can't even think up any jokes.

He spends most of his time daydreaming about Texas instead. Soft lapping waters, and wide open spaces. All a bit blurry, after decades of revisiting the same memories. He needs to go make some new ones.

"Hope I won't be seeing you again. No offense...you know, I still don't know your name," he says the last morning.

"That's fine, I don't remember yours."

Figures. "Got two candy bars left. Want 'em?"

"I'll take one."

They eat the chocolate together. Sweet, with a slightly sticky aftertaste. It'd go well with a good harsh whiskey, like the one he's going to treat himself to if Mac doesn't come.

"The guy'll show up," his cellmate says. "He promised you, didn't he?"

"Maybe he'll have forgotten about that."

"He didn't strike me as the type. Gotta hand it to him, that man was persistent."

"There's a niece for him to look after now," Jack says gloomily. "His whole life's gonna be wrapped up in her. There won't be any room for me."

"So get the niece to like you. Buy her another pack of candy bars, it should work just as well on little kids."

Jack sighs. "Doubt it'll be that easy..."

XXXXXXXXXXX

Mac shows up, though. Waves him into the jeep with a tired gesture.

"You look worse than I do." Not the first sentence he'd planned to say as a free man.

"Yeah. Well, stuff happens...mostly screwing up my life again, so no change there."

"Hey. Can't have been as bad as me, right? Or we'd just have been switching places, you in and me out."

That, at least, raises a chuckle; he'd been starting to wonder whether Mac remembered how. A certain cherished irritation (alas for his dreams of Texas) has immediately melted away at the sight of his friend, worn and wan and thinner than he should be.

"It's getting better now. Allison's estate is finally settled, the money's going into my bank account Monday. But- oh god, Jack, the things I've put Becky through since she got here. I'm still scared I'm not up to this."

"You love her. She loves you. It'll work out."

"Yeah, I'd like to think that, but- she's worrying me. Still won't cry for her parents, just putting on this brave little trooper act, and I don't know how to get through to her. I'm not...I mean, I wouldn't trust me either, in her shoes. Just about been keeping her fed and sheltered, but that's not the same as taking care of a kid- will you talk to her for me? I need to know if she wants to leave."

"Seriously?" Becky's doted on her uncle since she was old enough to toddle across a floor towards him, and Mac's always felt the same way.

"I don't think she'd be able to say it to my face. But she might tell you- she's always trusted you, all those dumb party tricks you amused her with when she was little."

"I went to a lot of trouble practicing those party tricks," Jack says loftily. "But- square with me, Mac, has it really been that bad while I was inside?"

"Well. I've got my fourteen-year old niece minding the store because I can't afford to lose any custom, the only vacation I've had in months is the day I took off to go poaching, and the only reason you're not walking the ten miles home is because Chuck was nice enough to let me borrow the jeep that I sold him three weeks ago. So yeah. Exactly that bad."

Jack looks around the lovingly maintained car, apple of Mac's eye. "Oh, hell."

"You said it, not me."

XXXXXXXXXXX

Becky's waiting on an elderly couple when they come in. Cooing over her precociousness, and comparing her to their own granddaughter. Mac makes an instinctive move for the counter; her glare and Jack's elbow in the ribs dissuade him, but he's visibly chafing.

"Sorry about that," he says, as soon as the customers have left. "I won't ask you to do that again, I promise."

"I did really well," she says, peeking in the tip jar. "And it was pretty fun, talking to people who aren't all my own age."

"Well, you can go do something actually fun now, enjoy yourself- huh. That is more than I'd expected."

"Girls always do better than boys," Becky says, very matter of fact. "Because Chris-" she stops for a thoughtful moment, then resumes as though she'd never stopped - "because Chris and I would always compare notes whenever we were selling school chocolates, or pens or anything, and I always sold more than he did. That's just how it is. C'mon, Unc? What if I just did Saturday mornings, when all the moms are out with their kids? I bet I'd make a lot."

"Becky, it's nice of you to offer," Mac says, looking very harassed, "but I'll take care of it. You don't have to do any of this stuff, I keep telling you that."

The look she gives her uncle makes Jack wonder if she's going to burst out crying, or run upstairs, or something dramatic- but she just sighs and glances imploringly at him.

"Will you please talk him into it? Please?"

"As though that'll work," Mac snorts, already deep into the receipt accounts. "Think I'm pretty wise to all your tricks by now, Jack."

Jack catches Becky's eye, and winks. "Since you're free, want to go outside for a walk?"

"No. Too cold. Though- I guess we could go egg hunting. At least that's one thing I get to do."

"Great. And maybe you can catch me up on the small town gossip. We'll leave your uncle here to get on with being busy all by himself."

Mac looks slightly hurt.

XXXXXXXXXXX

"He won't let me help," Becky says, listlessly fluffing up Posy's feathers (the hen accepts this with great philosophy). "There's all kinds of things I could do with the shop, and everything, but he just wants me to study and go play and whatever."

"Studying's pretty important," Jack says noncommittally, as he sets up against a comfortable fence post. That sounds like the kind of thing that gets said in these situations, doesn't it? Sure it is.

"I know it is, but- whenever I come up with something clever, he just ignores me. Last week I sold a quilt I made for fifty dollars, and he wouldn't let me do anything with it except put it in savings. I could be helping Saturdays in the shop, or even just a couple of hours after school, but it's just no this, and no that, and- does he even want me anymore?" Becky chokes. She scoops up the hen, cuddles it in her arms protectively.

"Of course he wants you to stay," Jack says, very gently. "Don't ever be in any doubt about that." (If Mac really is having second thoughts, that'll be his problem to explain.) "But he's a grown man, and you're still a kid, Mac thinks it's only fair for him to take care of you."

"None of this is fair! Mom and Dad and Chris, that wasn't fair! He's all I've got left, and I have to watch him having nightmares and skipping meals, and being so tired all the time, and if I lose him I don't know what I'll do!"

There's a look in her eyes that's appallingly familiar. Himself, even younger than Becky is now, displaced and homesick and needing one still point of happiness in a violently unfamiliar world-

"And you know you'll get through the rest of it," Jack murmurs, "as long as he's okay. If you can make him smile every morning, and chase off whatever's worrying him for a while, it's like chasing off your own demons too."

"Yeah," Becky says, catching her breath. "Exactly like that. How'd you know?"

"I'm not from Mission City either, you know. Texas first, then a stint in Wisconsin and finally I ended up here. Funny how Mac...huh." He trails off, not sure how to end it.

"You're an out of towner too?" Becky asks, hiccuping her way through a giggle. "And I thought I was the only one. Like a Tigger."

"We'll just have to be Tiggers together then, won't we?"

"Uncle Mac's right. You really are silly sometimes."

"Always was my speciality." Jack leans in, touches Posy's beak. "And how are we today, Mrs. Hen?"

The hen, predictably, clucks at him.

XXXXXXXXXXX

"Grief isn't all crying your eyes out, you know," he tells Mac later on. "Sometimes it's just throwing yourself so hard into something that you don't have time to be upset or scared anymore. Sorta like flying in that respect."

Mac looks unconvinced. "Everything is like flying to you. And the school psychologist told me-"

"Stuff the psychologist, I've been where she is now. All Becky wants is a chance to get to grips with life again. Let her stick her oar in every so often, look after you a bit, you'll have her smiling again in no time."

"That's tantamount to admitting I can't take care of her," Mac says. "And- oh, this shop isn't a good atmosphere for anyone. I don't want her to get used to it."

"You say that, because you hate it so much yourself. Might look different to a curious kid."

"Did it look different to you, Jack? Does it now?"

Jack musters up an hitherto unexpected reserve of patience. "Okay. No. But for one thing, I'm not your niece."

"Amazing deduction," Mac says, before going serious. "Jack, I saw what happened to my mother, after dad died. Working herself to death in this stupid shop- I'm not letting Becky do that."

"No," Jack says, eying his friend's exhausted pallor. "No, you're just going to do it yourself, aren't you? And then she'll really be alone. For the love of god, why'd you have to be so stubborn about accepting anybody's help?"

"You want something done right, do it yourself," Mac says firmly; but he'd flinched a little first, as if someone had hit him.

"Look," Jack says, enticingly. "You need a break, I need to do something that isn't prison routine. The ice rink's open now, right? Let Becky try her hand for another couple of hours, you can work off some of your frustrations by beating me to a jelly."

"That's hitting below the belt. You know me way too well," Mac says. "I was going to start dinner for Becky."

"I'll give you five minutes."

"I guess I can be out of here in two."

XXXXXXXXXXX

He always knows he loves it: but Mac never remembers just how good it is on the ice, until he's out and skating again. The swish of gliding metal, sharp awake air and breeze of passage, are the stuff of pure physical sensation rather than thought. Like what he's read about meditation- everything blotted out except the one ongoing moment.

They've been going at it for hours now, until they're the only skaters left, and Jack's still puffing away somehow. Poor pitiful Jack, not much of a goalie but even worse at scoring. He really shouldn't find it so damned satisfying, to demolish an opponent this terrible- but it never gets old. It just doesn't.

"Had enough yet?" he can't help taunting. "Or are you just gonna be a glutton for punishment?"

"Guess so," Jack says, panting his weary way across the ice. "See if I can't do better, if I'm not the one to cry uncle this time."

"You'll be out here all night," Mac says, skating a circle around him just for the hell of it. Easy enough to do tricks like this, when he's feeling light as air, light as wind, pleasantly warm with exertion. Heart thumping away unevenly, that's happened a few times now. He ignores it, wondering what it'll take to make Jack back down. Usually the man's more than happy to accede, after a few goes; where's all this determination coming from, the no-nonsense expression?

A flick of the puck, out of his control and into Jack's, for just so long as will justify a legal body checking (he has already done this four times tonight, but if the dupe keeps falling for it)- Mac slams into the smaller man, maybe with a touch too much aggression. Jack staggers, almost falls, but somehow recovers his balance, staggering off to lick his wounds.

So good, so flowing, so much light-

he's feeling practically weightless, now-

and Jack slides along the ice, slamming him back so hard as to send him flying, and it isn't the impact, he could handle the impact- it's just that he's run out of energy, and suddenly can't breathe anymore. He crumples downwards, just avoiding a spinout, every ounce of weight in his body pulling him downwards now. Still trying to grab a breath, but it's too heavy, everything's too heavy-

XXXXXXXXXXX

"Becky, is that you?"

"Who else would it be?" Becky says, much amused. "I know that you two like hockey, but three hours of it? Sheesh."

"I need help!" Jack wails into the phone. "I knocked into him on the ice, and he fell down and he won't let me call an ambulance-"

"We can't afford one," Becky says flatly. "Did he break anything?"

"I don't think so. But he's too woozy to skate or probably even walk, how do I even get him home? I can't carry him, I'm exhausted!"

Becky spends ten seconds being absolutely still. This isn't fair, this isn't fair at all, but it's on her. It's all on her now, and her sense of confidence surprises her.

"Did you at least get him off the rink yet?"

"No. I could probably skate him along, if I could figure out how to get him upright. But I don't want to get him halfway up and drop him."

"Lever him up with a hockey stick, duh," Becky says absently. "Uh- give me half an hour to get there, I'll figure something out."

Twenty minutes to the rink, ten to figure out a plan. What they really need is the jeep, or a wheelbarrow, or failing that even a bicycle to decouple; but they don't, so she'll have to think of something else. Lots of blankets, to keep Mac warm. What have they got that's wheeled, and strong enough to take a man's weight?

XXXXXXXXXXX

Up to this point, Mission City's opinion of Becky Grahme has been defined strictly in terms of things she happens to be: the girl whose family died in that tragic accident, the niece of that slightly dotty coffee shop owner, the weirdly-accented out of towner.

Tonight, as she charges down the street with a kitchen chair fastened to a push mower (duck tape, knotted cord, more duck tape), the gossip shifts towards what she's capable of: the girl who's always doing those wacky improvisational thingamabobs. Just like her uncle.

Not a distinction that Becky has any time to notice, that evening; but it's one that cheers her up rather a lot in years to come.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Mac whimpers. He can't help himself; vertigo isn't a nice sensation for an acrophobic. A tight and dizzy spiral, bodiless and weightless.

But he can sense there's someone holding him steady, as much as his brain is insisting otherwise. He tentatively opens his eyes to find Becky cuddling him on the kitchen sofa.

"I passed out, didn't I? Guess I overdid it."

"Jack and I figure that's what happened," Becky says, throwing a dirty look at the former (who has elected to forego chairs, in favour of slumping in a heap against the wall). "Three hours! Unc, that's way too much of a good thing."

"And don't I know it," Jack says, with histrionic zeal. "I am dead. DOA on arrival, deceased, you can roll poor old Jack Dalton out and bury him in his grave."

"Jack, the OA part already stands for on arrival," Mac says pedantically.

"Does it?"

"Drink this," Becky says, passing him a straw. "Ginger water with plenty of sugar."

"From a professional point of view, way too much," Mac observes, but drinks it down. The world starts to settle back into familiar patterns.

So it's just back home again, which he hates so much- well. Not quite the familiar patterns. He's warmly tucked beneath a black diamond quilt he's never seen before; this must be from Becky's collection. And there's other traces of her, now he's looking for them. Bright little ribbons tied to the cupboard handles, that eternal rent in the window seat cushion now neatly patched up. Maybe he's given up on the place long since, but she seems determined to make it cheerful.

Jack gets up with a groan and stirs something on the stove, looking surprisingly domestic as he flourishes a wooden spoon.

"You sure this isn't too much cheese sauce? Heckuva lotta it here."

"No such thing," Becky says. "White and red cheddar, I went all out."

"When did we get that?"

"When I went and bought it with my own money. And you're going to eat it as soon as it's ready. So there."

"Hear here," Jack comments.

"You know, when I was about four I thought it was just the funniest food ever? Because whenever anybody was talking to him and they'd say 'Mac', I'd just say 'and cheese!' The whole month he was visiting, nobody could get me to stop."

"How come you never told me that your niece was such a paragon of comedy? That's hilarious!"

Mac's blush is answer enough.

"So, Jack and I were talking while you were asleep. And he's going to start taking a day at the shop, to help you out."

"Under protest," Jack adds. "But it's not as if anyone ever wants a taxi on Wednesday. Or any other day, really...guess I might as well be serving drinks, I spend enough time here as is."

"And I'll take Saturday mornings, and that way you'll have some time to start building stuff again, instead of being tied to the cash register all week. Cos I miss my crazy inventor uncle," Becky says. "I want to see you again, not just the guy who makes people coffee."

"You really are so much like your mother," Mac tells her quietly. "Her side got all the practicality in the family...she'd be so proud of you, Becky."

She grins, but doesn't say anything. Just starts setting the table for dinner.

 _While I'm going ahead and letting a teenager and a convict plan my whole future for me._

But they're right enough, he has to admit; he's worried himself to a frazzle trying to keep things under control. Just too tired to keep going solo. Thank goodness he won't have to now, or at least not quite so much.

And he does need to look after himself, or else who's going to keep an eye on these two?

XXXXXXXXXXX

Out of an abundance of caution, Jack locks his door, draws the bolt, and shuts the curtains before allowing himself a furtive sigh of relief.

His body hurts in more different ways that he would have figured possible. If anybody had asked at the start of the day whether he thought he could survive a gruelling three-hour exercise bout, he'd have laughed, said no way...but needs must. Mac'll be a bit less hard on himself in future; Becky will get back some of the control she needs.

And if either uncle or niece ever work out that he did it on purpose, hanging grimly on all night until he could push Mac over the edge, they will kill him. Or ban him from the coffee shop for life, which would be way worse.

"Best con I'll ever do, though," Jack says, yawning at his reflection in the mirror. "Let's see. Liniment, ice, and a whole lotta whiskey, for starters...


	17. Blueberry Blues

Tuesdays, Mac starts slipping down to Jack's trailer again. Still drunk, but not so much these days. (If there's anything Jack and Becky have bonded on, it's plotting to look after her idiot uncle. And she wants out of here just as bad as he does; they'll get Mac out of Mission City, if they have to drag him kicking and screaming.)

"Becky's sort of cover, for us," he says once. "People are so busy pitying her, and gossiping about her, and feeling sorry for her because she's being brought up by her bachelor uncle who doesn't know anything about how to raise girls. I mean, I don't like it any more than she does. But it's taken the heat off us, a bit." He sighs. "I think she's played up to it once or twice when people started giving us funny looks again, but I haven't caught her at it."

"Ask her. She'd tell you the truth."

"Suppose she says yes, and I have to give her a talking to about not takin' risks just to look after us? They say not to make rules you can't enforce. I'm not sure I could stop Becky doing anything, that she thought would stop me getting hurt...though you know, there's one thing everybody's right about."

"What's that?"

"That I must be having a lot of trouble, raising a kid all on my lonesome. It would be just that difficult, if I didn't have you 'round to help me out."

Jack finds himself flushing. "I don't do that much. Maybe make her laugh, sometimes."

"Some days, you can tease a smile out of her when even I can't," Mac says, resting against him contentedly. "And- just being there. Somebody at my back, if anything ever did happen to me."

"Don't you dare."

"I'll try not to."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Of course, there's also the question of something happening to Becky. Which is a worry never far from Mac's mind, these days.

"You'd better take my coat," he says, frowning up at the sky. For the last ten minutes he's only been guessing at the way out of these woods, and Becky's light jacket was intended for Pacific Northwest conditions. Not Minnesota sleet.

He shouldn't have even let her come out wearing that, but the afternoon had started off so nice and warm. They'd wanted to pick the last of the autumnal blueberries before tomorrow's predicted hail...which had arrived today. So much for the weather report.

"Not happening," Becky says, grimacing as she splashes through yet another slushy puddle. "You're the one who knows the way back, I don't want you collapsing on me or anything. How would I ever get you out of these woods?"

She has a point there.

He's been worrying how she'll handle the upcoming season. Becky's never had to live through a winter this hard, after all. Ellen's hinted about a thick woolen coat with rabbit fur trim for Christmas, but that's still a while off.

"It's okay, Unc," she says. "I'm fine."

"I shouldn't have trusted to anybody else," he mutters. "It's my job looking after you."

"Mmm?"

"Never mind." He catches sight of the trailer park with a good deal of relief and some private irritation. The shop's a solid mile and a half from here, and his niece is going an ethereal shade of blue.

Fortunately, there's a cab driver they know who lives right down the way. His hands are full with the blueberry pails, so Becky bangs on the door, hard.

"Oh, hi! You look like a couple of popsicles. Come on in," Jack says.

"Thanks, but no," Mac says. "I've got to get her home. Can you start the cab?"

Jack casts a dubious glance at Becky, pulls the shivering teenager inside. "What you need is to get her warm first. Stay a couple minutes, let me get the heater running. Then I'll take you."

Mac sighs in irritation, but follows.

"I can't get these off," Becky says, pulling at her soaking sneakers with numb fingers. Mac kneels down, helps her untie the laces. These definitely aren't winter wear either. He feels a familiar surge of guilt, letting his beloved niece down yet again.

There's a tearing noise behind them; he glances around and sees that Jack's ripped down the more inappropriate pictures from the wall. That's...thoughtful, actually. Instead of an R-rated trailer, now it's just an improbably messy one with a busted couch. Still not exactly the kind of place Becky ought to be, though.

"Now let's see. One big towel, to dry yourself off-" Jack hands her an oversized flowery affair (where did that come from? He's never seen it before). "One pile of blankets on the sofa here- kinda ratty, but you're welcome to all of them. And two cups of hot chocolate, coming right up. Or jelly glasses, if I'm being honest."

"That sounds great," Becky agrees, diving under the blankets as soon as she's out of her wet things. "The kind with marshmallows?"

"Only kind worth buying! Except when Mac's making it, of course."

Mac pulls off his own soaked coat and wraps himself in a spare blanket. Settles down next to his niece, and starts rubbing some of the life back into her hands.

If anything happened to her-

"Geez, Unc, I'm not all that fragile. Just cold. Don't worry so much."

"You're not even looking at me."

"I can tell."

She probably can.

"Looks like fun out there," Jack says, peering out the window. "Sure you don't want to stay? You two look awfully cosy there."

"Don't be ridiculous. Where would you sleep?"

"On the floor, where else? Actually, probably not on the floor. On that pile of clean laundry over there."

"How do you know the difference between that and the dirty laundry?" Becky asks dubiously.

"Because the dirty pile," Jack says, pointing with exaggerated gestures, "is over here. The clean pile is over there. Do keep up."

She giggles.

"And here's the hot chocolate for both of you. Might want to sit up now."

Mac takes a sip and almost spits it out. "Jack, this is awful! What'd you do, shake a packet into the cup and microwave it?"

"Uh, yeah? Followed the package directions to the letter, honest."

"It's hot," Becky says diplomatically. "That's pretty much all I care about right now."

"Thanks, but no thanks. I want to take Becky home and make her something actually drinkable."

"Saints preserve us," Jack says, rolling his eyes, "from a barista's professional pride. Okay, okay, I'll go get the car started."

He's back in three minutes. "Or not. Car's dead."

"You're a cab driver. This isn't supposed to happen."

"Hey, I had to get a new vehicle fast and cheap. So the good side of things let me down in a snowstorm, that's not a crime. You wanna go outside and take a look?"

Mac sighs. "In this weather? With one of the junkers that you pick up? That's gonna be fun..."

"Or," Becky says, grabbing his wrist. "You could stay in here and I could have an uncle who doesn't freeze to death in a blizzard. That's a good idea too."

"I think she has the right of it, frankly," Jack agrees. "I had dinner earlier, what about you two? Got- well, not that much, I was going to go shopping but then I just couldn't be bothered. Uh- that's turned green, that's a bucket of engine grease, that's a bag of alcohol-soaked gummies- either of you want an alcoholic gummy worm?"

"No thanks."

"Definitely not."

"And a microwave lasagna. It isn't even expired or anything."

"Becky can have that," Mac says. "I was eating a lot of the blueberries as we went, anyway. Sorry."

"You always do, though. Long as I can remember."

"Actually, he only started doing it once he married Ellen," Jack says, unwrapping the lasagna. "The first few years, I was fixing up care packages every week so he wouldn't starve to death on her cooking. He called it love, I called it temporary insanity."

"She was fine as long as she stuck to meat and potatoes," Mac says defensively. "It was when she tried to put on an effect that things went horribly wrong- okay, so the whole marriage was a bad idea but at least I taught her a few things. Once I got her over the idea that she ought to magically know how to do it without training. And she's given up trying to make meat jello taste good."

"Meat jello?" Becky asks. "I'm not getting this."

"You know. Fruit jello, cherry or lime- she liked lime. Made in a big mold, with some canned vegetables and chopped spam in the middle. Or lutefisk, if she was feeling imaginative."

"Still not getting it. Don't think I want to, really."

"And yet he makes fun of me for microwaving things. At least I know where my competency stops," Jack says, handing Becky the hot lasagna. "So. What channel are we gonna watch?"

Which, funnily enough, is when the power goes out.

"Oh, that just figures," Mac mutters.

"Don't worry about it!" Jack shouts. "Propane heat. We'll be fine."

"Jack, we're still right where we were. You don't have to shout."

"Oh, yeah. Hang on. I know I have an emergency candle in here somewhere- ow! Why'd I leave that cupboard open?"

"Try under the sink," Mac says. "I've got some matches in my coat pocket, if you can find that. Inside left, in a plastic carrying case."

"Got it. Here we go."

"That's nice, actually," Becky says, finally digging into her dinner as the candle flickers into light. Jack sets it down on the coffee table (more of a bench, really). "Though, is that the only one?"

"'Fraid so. Still, it's a biggish one. Should last the night. What beats me is, what do we do for entertainment?"

"I could try taking the radio out of your car," Mac jokes.

"Seriously?" Jack says eagerly. "I'd love to watch you try."

"What- no, that'd be silly. Course I wouldn't. I'd probably break something important."

"C'mon, you gotta have more confidence in yourself. Let's do it. Worse that can happen is you break it and I have a gaping hole in my dashboard, right?"

"Ummm...yes?"

"Well, okay then!"

To his surprise, things work out.

They have a very ironic time listening to "Prairie Home Companion" that night.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Around midnight, Mac wakes up for some reason, rested and thoroughly at peace. Becky's fallen asleep against his shoulder, with her hair all up in his face. He brushes it away with a smile.

To think he could have lost her. If she'd gone along on that Scout trip, with her brother...his throat closes tight at the thought. It's only been a few months, but already he can't imagine not hearing her voice every day. Seeing her warm gaze every morning, her cheerful laughter-

a heavy, impatient knock slams on the door; he jolts out of his half-doze with terror. It can't possibly be good, not at this time of night- some of Jack's less-than-friends, maybe? Come to collect a debt, or worse?

Becky whimpers sleepily, finds his hand and squeezes it. Mac squeezes back, then levers himself up and hides her under all the blankets.

"Just don't say anything, princess," he whispers.

The knock again. More firmly this time.

Jack mutters something that Mac suspects to be deliberately inaudible, and shoves the door open. "Sheesh! Whaddya want this time of night?"

Blue uniform, blue cap. "Just checking up. A lot of people lost power tonight, we wanted to make sure everyone was all right."

"Oh," Jack says in relief. "Yeah, we're fine. Propane heat, it might explode but at least you're self-sufficient. Is that it, officer?"

"Not quite." The officer swings his flashlight up suddenly, straight into Mac's face; he cringes instinctively, closes his eyes.

"He got lost picking blueberries," Jack says gibly, "and ended up at my trailer, soaked in snow. It's not like I was gonna kick him out."

"Uh-huh." The cop sounds incredulous.

Mac wishes, very hard, that it'd been friendly Sgt Olson to be making the rounds instead.

"So...you weren't up to anything, were you?"

"Good lord, no," Jack says, with a sobriety that sets off all of Mac's alarms. If even Jack thinks that the situation's too serious for a joke-

"You are familiar with Minnesota's laws on sodomy?"

"No," Mac says, and wonders if he said it too quick.

"Yes," Jack says wearily. "A year in prison, and a three thousand dollar fine. Officer, I promise you we weren't doing anything."

"That so? Because I've heard some mighty funny reports about this trailer. Fellow has a way of ending up here a lot, doesn't he? Tell me, why didn't you drive him home in the cab?"

 _A whole year? This can't be happening, who'll take care of Becky?_

"Battery had packed up. It might be working now, but it sure wasn't then."

"You could have called us in. For a lift back to your house. What about it, Mac?"

"I-"

"Uncle Mac," Becky asks, her voice clear and uncharacteristically childish. "What's going on?"

"Um," Mac says wildly. "Nothing for you to worry about, it's just the police. Checking to see if we're okay."

The officer frowns. "Has that kid been here the whole time?"

"Sure I have," Becky says, coughing a little piteously. "We were picking blueberries, and we got caught in the blizzard, and I was so wet and cold. It was awful. And then we finally made it here, and Jack made us hot chocolate-" she trails off, in another fit of coughing.

"Oh, I hope you're not getting sick," Mac says worriedly.

The officer's still looking dubious. "Mind if I have a few questions with her? Alone?"

"You can't send the poor kid outside in this weather," Jack says. "She'll freeze to death, look at her."

"Then I'll come inside."

"Not without a search warrant," Jack says firmly. "Look, do you really think anything remotely questionable could have been going on, with his niece right there? Sheesh!"

"And I suppose she's along every Tuesday night, is that right?"

"Sometimes," Becky says, guilelessly. "Sometimes we make sugar cookies and cut them into little shapes. You ever done that, officer? It's really lots of fun-"

He glares at her with undisguised loathing. "You three are too clever for your own good, you know that?"

But goes. Slamming the door shut behind him.

Jack swallows, settles on the floor by the sofa. "That was pretty close. For a minute or two there I thought we were gonners- that was sharp thinking on your part, Becky. Sorry about you having to lie for us."

"No lying about it," Becky says. "Don't you remember that time we did make all those sugar cookies? You kept eating raw dough straight from the bowl?"

"Becky," Mac says, "you were eight. That was years ago."

"He didn't ask me which Tuesday it was, did he?" Becky says with a grin.

"And your cough's got a lot better suddenly," Jack comments.

"Yeah. Funny about that, isn't it?"

Mac sinks down next to Jack. The adrenaline's still pumping through him; it's hard trying to persuade himself that everything's okay now.

Jack notices his discomfort, squeezes his hand gently. It's nice, but it just makes him feel more guilty. If he's putting Becky at risk...

"Maybe we'd better put off Tuesdays for a while," he suggests. "Just to be on the safe side."

Or for a few years, at least until Becky's graduated and gone. Out of here for good.

Becky leans over, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. "Don't you dare, Unc. Everything's been bad enough for us this year as it is. And movie night always cheers you up, you know that."

Good thing she can't see how embarrassed he is, from this position.

"He might be right," Jack says reluctantly. "I mean, if we both ended up on charges, Becky, then your goose is flamebroiled and done to a turn."

"It isn't fair," Becky insists. And starts to cough for real this time.

"Damn police officers letting in draughts," Mac mutters. He checks her temperature, which is a lot lower than he likes. "Jack, she's freezing."

"I'm out of hot chocolate."

"Anything. Hot water, if you have to, just something that'll get her core temperature up." He wraps the blankets around her, pulls all the towels out of Jack's clean pile and throws them on too.

"Here you go," Jack says, passing her yet another jelly glass.

Becky drinks it with relief. "Thanks. Think I just got some dust caught in my throat- this place really needs a spring cleaning."

"That's a relief," Mac says, cuddling her close. "I thought-"

"What, that I'd curl up like a flower petal just because of a little winter? C'mon, Unc, I'm made of tougher stuff than that."

She's putting it on for him. He knows how much she feels the cold.

Still, though. She does look perfectly fine now, and Jack's trailer certainly does need a good clean-out. Maybe he does worry about her too much.

And apparently not enough about other things. No Tuesday is worth losing Becky, or even risking that.

Jack's staring at him, longingly. Mac shakes his head.

It hurts. It hurts like anything. Tearing a chunk out of his heart and flinging it carelessly away.

"Guess I'd better shut these lights off," Jack says quietly. "And we can all go back to bed. Sofa, whatever."

Mac manages a laugh at that, though he doesn't really feel like it.

He waits until they're both fast asleep before he lets the tears come. Becky's still clutching him, in her sleep; her soft embrace eases the pain a little.

Even if hers isn't the one he wants, right now.


	18. Mac and Jack and Becky

The videodisc system sits in Mac's workshop now, along with a dusty engine prototype and various other bric-a-brac from his broken dreams. He tells himself he's just too busy to go down there, these days. It's a comforting sort of lie.

One he needs to hear. He's starved for his niece, given up his beloved jeep and a good chunk of what's left of his self-respect, along with any chance of leaving with Jack, and now his sweet, stolen Tuesdays have gone too. Of course he'd do it all, just the same, but... Jack's taken him at his word, started drinking at the Wingman Bar again. Only fair, really.

Someday, his clever niece is going to get out of this town. Maybe to study for that chemistry degree he never had. He hopes she never looks back.

Though Mac's starting to think he'll just go crazy, when Becky leaves.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"Unc, could you start the popcorn popper?"

"Sure thing." It's a good cheap snack, fun and easy to spice in plenty of different ways. They make it pretty often.

So Mac doesn't catch on to what she's really up to, until he finishes and brings the hot bowl over to their sofa (with butter, not margarine- he could always tell the difference when Jack was making it). Finds her blowing dust off his movie collection.

"What'd you lug that back up here for?"

"Cos I wanted to watch a movie," Becky says. "What else?"

At least it isn't Tuesday.

The doorbell rings, faintly; Mac hurries down, wondering who'd be here this time of night. He closes the shop early on Saturdays, so he and Becky can have some relaxation for once in their lives.

A perishing November wind blows through the door. Along with- "Jack? Uh, hi."

"Wanna help me carry this?" Jack shoves a paper bag into his hands, filled with plastic utensils and soda (he's keeping a tight grip on the one with all the food in it.) "Becky called me. Said she fancied some Chinese food."

"Ah." It's one of Jack's odder duties as cab driver, driving out to pick up takeout from other towns (it's not worth anyone's else's time to deliver to Mission City; there just isn't enough call for anything besides pizza.) "Give me a minute, I'll raid the tip jar and pay you back."

"Lighten up, willya? You don't get to be the only person who does nice things for your niece. Unless you put some kind of moratorium on that, in which case, I'd have to say that was pretty dumb."

"It's not about doing her a favour. You're trying to do me one." Dammit, his pride might be in shreds but he's clinging on to what there is of it.

"So go lock yourself in your room and don't eat any. Becky and I are gonna-" Jack pauses, weighs his next sentence carefully. "Put one of your movies in the player, sit down on the sofa, and watch it. Actually, literally, watch a film. That all right by you?"

"If that's what she wants to do, sure."

Mac's rather tempted to go ahead with that hide-in-the-bedroom idea, but when they do finally get up the stairs, he has to put down the soda, and get some ice- and before he entirely knows what's happening, Becky's pulled him over to the sofa and Jack's jammed himself on the other end, so that he's stuck sandwiched between the two of them.

With a hot bowl of popcorn on his lap. While his mind's simultaneously racing and trying not to think about how awkward this is, the prospect of a cosy rest and some greasy takeout is sounding more and more attractive. Maybe he should just settle in and enjoy this.

"Who wants to pick?" Becky asks. "I'm having a little trouble deciding, honestly."

Mac endeavors not to look at Jack. "Not a Western."

"They're all Westerns," Jack says. "No, wait. You had one-"

"Sunset Boulevard!" Becky announces, pulling it out of the stack. "There we go."

Oh, great. A psychosexual film noir about people endlessly reliving their more optimistic past, that's not going to be unsettlingly close to home at all. (Sheesh, even Ellen's moved on.)

Still, at least it's one movie he and Jack never did get around to watching...

"Are you going to want to do this every Saturday?" he asks his niece.

"I think so," Becky says, comfortably snuggling up against him. "Hey, it'll be something for Jack to do besides get drunk alone in his trailer."

"What? When? I know you're a bit more than a social drinker-"

"But at least I've had the sense not to drink alone?" Jack shrugs. "It was Tuesday night, I was bored."

For the first time since Becky's arrival, Mac finds himself fretting about somebody besides her. "Please don't do that."

"Make me promise," Jack says, a glint in his eye.

"Okay," Mac says, flippant and careless. "Promise me you won't, okay? Only I guess I've got used to having you 'round."

"Done. Does that mean I'm invited next Saturday?" Jack asks quietly, as Becky pops the movie in.

"Let's see how this one goes, first."

And finally the movie's on, so thankfully that conversation comes to an end. Though it bothers him all the way through, that somehow his niece has heard a piece of gossip about Jack before he did.

Maybe he ought to have been paying more attention.

No. Of course he should have.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"I see you stuck around for some of Unc's pancakes," Becky says, the next morning.

"He does 'em better than I do," Jack says lazily, watching a very content Mac flip another onto the syrup-soaked stack. "Fact is, he can cook just about anything better than me. Though I can make mediocre French toast, if you wanna-"

"Absolutely not!"

"He means, no thanks," Becky says politely. "Also, that he'd probably be just as happy if you never said 'French toast' to him ever again."

"Sheesh! I was only offering..."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Of course, things aren't quite the same as before.

It takes Jack a while to realise, with a certain bemusement, that his Saturdays have ended up in a sort of domestic routine. Mac picks up a lot of movies that aren't Westerns for them to watch (though they eventually get around to those again, as Becky turns out to share her uncle's sincere taste for the genre). She's always round, wryly commenting on the films and fetching quilts and generally making the whole thing a lot more homey. Her knack for interesting flavours of popcorn is a change from his all-junk-food-all-the-time style, that's for sure.

Of course, he's still to be found at the Wingman Bar half the nights in the week, but- this kind of domestic adventure, he thinks he can live with. Because it isn't judgemental; it isn't like the rest of Mission City, trying to live up to a perfect innocuous photograph in an aspirational magazine. It's just the three of them, making a safe space for themselves against the odds. Having a damned good try at being happy, despite all the reasons they shouldn't be.

And it's so much easier for them to avoid suspicion this way. The takeout deliveries are self-explanatory (he firmly refuses to let Mac pay for them, ever), and he can sneak home the next day without anybody being the wiser.

After all. Sunday mornings, everybody else in Mission City is at church.


	19. Ralph

The timing can be a little irregular, as early as October some years; but no later than December first, there's always a cheque waiting for Mac at the post office. Postmarked from Skagway, Alaska, for a thousand dollars. Sometimes it goes into savings, sometimes it goes towards the shop. A diamond ring, one year. A lawyer's fee. His mother's funeral expenses.

This year, it's earmarked for Becky. Anything she's so much as hinted at wanting- a red Victorinox knife just like his, more sewing material, a set of brown buttoned boots for the snow- Mac's determined to get for her.

 _And there'll be plenty left over for all the trimmings, and a proper donation to her choir fund. Maybe I'll even try to wrangle a goose again. After the year we've had, Becky deserves a proper Christmas- and so do I, at that._

He has no idea whether his Grandpa Harry even gets the annual letters, or reads them. But Mac likes to think he does.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I know what you want this year," Jack says, as they studiously ignore the Thanksgiving football (first one to succumb to temptation and comment on the game loses). "One, a brand-spankin' new VCR and some Westerns to watch. That videodisc system of yours is an antique, these days."

"There's a lot to be said for records as a long-term storage medium," Mac protests. "And I already own the Dollars trilogy, what more do I want?"

"But a VCR lets you record reruns. Just think of all those episodes of 'The Wild Wild West' that you could play back whenever you like."

"I'll admit, that's a pretty tempting prospect…Becky, you asleep? I think she fell asleep." He looks fondly at his niece, tucked up in a nest of half-constructed blankets.

"The way you have with a turkey, I can believe that- hey, I can swear again! So, two. Revenge on that bastard who waltzed off with Ellen."

"Are you kidding? I'm grateful to the guy. No more alimony to pay, Ellen's off my hands for good…and I was worrying about her despite everything, so that's a relief."

"Put it this way, then. Who else in town is as rich as Ralph Jerico?"

"Penny Parker, I guess. You know her, right? Parents are nuclear physicists at MIT, or something."

Jack gives an exaggerated shiver. "The one with the crazy drink orders? Wish I could forget her- but you can't rip off a poor little rich girl at Christmas. Bad karma."

"Uh-oh. Do I detect another Dalton flimflamm in the works?"

"Coming right up. As soon as I think of a good one- wanna lend your brainpower to the task?"

"Nah. That's one field I'm happy to let you have the edge over me."

"Hey, that was a pretty good pass," Becky says sleepily. "Nice one."

She's not sure why the comment should provoke such gales of laughter; but the sound's as comforting as her quilts.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ralph Jerico is a man with a plan.

Ever since the prison shut down, Mission City has been a community of lost bawling sheep. Somebody needs to take charge; somebody needs to fill the vacuum. Start rebuilding the town from scratch, based on a foundation more dependable than the vagaries of federal funding.

Such as blackmail, for instance. He takes a delicate sip at his drink, watches MacGyver down half his glass of Scotch at one gulp.

"Why me?" he manages, after a moment. "If it's Dalton you really want."

"Oh, there's no use trying to blackmail him," Jerico explains, lightly. "He's already a convict, a public scandal, and even the much chewed-over question of whether you were cheating on Ellen with him is old hat. I couldn't get anyone interested in that question if I asked it at town meeting."

"No. That isn't me."

"I doubt anyone would believe the pair of you. But I don't want him to flee town, either- and your background offered just the right type of leverage. I've tracked down the editor who published Mike Forrester's article. There's a rather gracious thank-you letter he's written for you, signed and dated. You won't be able to give away coffee in this town if I ever make that public."

Outside, the snow's falling, carolers are practicing. There's a roaring fire going, in Jerico's well-appointed home office; but it doesn't make Mac feel any warmer.

"And in exchange for keeping this silent, you want- what?"

"A thousand dollars a month?- no, I won't ask that, but it was amusing to see your expression. Talk your friend Dalton into accepting an ongoing piloting job for me. No questions asked, and he'll be rewarded handsomely."

"If it was anything halfway decent, you wouldn't be going to all this trouble. You'd just go ahead and hire him."

"Some people object to drug-running, even ex-cons. We're halfway between Duluth and the Twin Cities. Excellent location, with a discontented and underemployed populace. Same principle as the Prohibition bootleggers- and you know how everyone romanticises them."

"Cocaine and heroin aren't the same as alcohol."

"The morality concerns me not in the slightest," Jerico says, refilling their glasses. "You see, unlike you I genuinely appreciate this town. The atmosphere appeals to me."

"It would. Sanctimonious batch of…oh, never mind."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"We gotta talk."

"How'd it go?" Jack asks smugly, as he locks the shop door. "You remembered to turn on your recorder gadget, right?"

"Yeah, and I don't think he noticed it, but it was still a complete disaster! He said more than enough incriminating stuff, but there's no way we could threaten to tell it to the cops. It was all about me."

"Uh-oh. What was it, us? The smuggling racket? That time you served everybody decaf for a week, because you'd run out of real coffee?"

"Worse than any of that," Mac says, not even smiling. "It was about Mike's letter, the one that shut down the FCI. My first foray into prison-breaking...and he has documentary proof."

Jack doesn't say anything. Just pulls off his leather jacket, and hands it over.

"Put this on. You look like you're freezing."

"It's got pretty cold out there," Mac mutters, gratefully slipping into the cosy garment. "Thanks…so now we're in a bind. Either you agree to start flying in shipments of crack for him, or I get a lynch mob trying to burn down the shop with me and Becky in it."

"Not much of a choice, is it? Guess I'd better brush up on my drug slang."

"No! I mean- I can't- you've never ended up in prison because of anything I've done. I can't ask you to do a thing like this."

"It's kinda my fault for trying to outthink a paid-up member of Mensa," Jack muses. "So much for my cunning plan- cheer up, Mac. He's going to all this trouble because he thinks I'm a competent pilot, right?"

"I guess."

"So what happens if I crash his plane? A couple of them, if necessary. He won't have any more reason to blackmail you then. Maybe somebody else will bring in the drugs anyway, but that'll be on them."

"If he gets the idea you're doing it on purpose, we're both dead."

"Good point. So it'll have to be under irreproachable circumstances. Say, if I'd be putting my best friend's life at risk."

"Jack, please no. You know how I feel about heights."

"You got a better plan, now's the time to mention it."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He doesn't come up with a better plan, so come Friday they're standing in a cold field, with a plane that to Mac's jaundiced eye looks terrifyingly decrepit.

Jack coos at it, running his gloves over the nose with a perturbing sensuality.

"Better you than me," the pilot says with a shudder. "Couldn't pay me enough to take that thing up again."

"Anything broken?" Mac asks anxiously.

"Probably easier to tell you what isn't. I think the floormats are still in one piece?"

"We're only taking a short hop," Jack reassures him. "So I can get the feel. Up and over the Lakes and back again, you'll hardly notice you're off the ground."

 _It's for Becky. You're doing this because you have to look after Becky, and you can't do that without the shop._

That line of thought gets him into the plane, even keeps him calm during the warm-up; and by the time the wheels start rolling, it's too late. Jack, bless his heart, seems to be trying to make the trip as smooth as possible. Though there's only so much he can do, with an engine this choky.

"I think she's misfiring."

"Ignore him," Jack tells the plane tenderly. "He's just jealous because I know how you work and he doesn't."

"I'm on a kamikaze flight. Tell me why I shouldn't panic. Tell me why I shouldn't descend into two hours of complete gibbering panic."

"You'll put me off my game."

"Shutting up now," Mac says immediately.

"Well, don't do that, or this'll be a long dull flight. Want some whiskey?"

"I'm on a kamikaze flight with a drunk pilot?"

Jack sighs. "Mac, even I'm not that thick. It's for you. Just make sure you've got those air bags rigged up before you get stuck in."

"Bet you I'll finish the bottle before we even turn around."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He doesn't, but there's only a couple of inches left by the time they're making the descent.

"I thought you were gonna make for the park."

"Had a better idea. He'll really get the point if we crash in town, right?"

"You might hurt someone!"

"Nah, don't think so. I've been keeping a pretty close eye on Jerico's house, this last week. They won't be around this time of day."

"I dunno if my improvisations are gonna hold up to that kind of strain. Actually, I'm almost sure they won't."

"Mac. You gotta have more faith in yourself."

He closes his eyes and simply prays, as the plane drops sickeningly downwards. They slam into his homemade cushions, as it screams its way through an unholy crunch, and screech of torn metal. And, a millennium or two later, finally stops.

"See? We're still alive. Your wacky invention worked, it's all good."

Mac blinks. "I guess I was a lot more scared of what was going to happen than I was when it was actually happening."

"Have I cured your fear of heights yet?" Jack enquires, as they fold up the telltale plastics.

"No."

"Shucks."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Of course he didn't put Dalton up to it," Ellen says. "He wouldn't have the backbone."

"Is that so," Jerico says, eying the smoldering remnant of what had been a very expensive home office (what's left of it is rather oddly decorated with bits of shattered plane wing). "I'm glad you say so, because if I thought he had, I'd be suing him for every penny he's got."

"Don't tell me you're concerned about the money," Ellen says, her lip curling. "Anyone in town could have told you not to hire drunken Dalton. What possessed you?"

He does quite a bit of shouting, in the ensuring argument.

It's nice having someone she can shout at back with wholehearted enthusiasm.


	20. Ellen and Ralph

Ellen wakes up Christmas morning with a sense of utter well-being.

She's always been a small-town girl, and she likes it that way. But until the new house is ready they're staying in a luxurious hotel suite in St Paul, and she has to admit the place has its compensations. People to wait on them hand and foot, and enough money to do all the shopping she likes.

(Less than she'd have expected, actually; but after a lifetime of straitened circumstances, it's nice to be able to buy herself a new coat without worrying how much of a dent it'll make in the household budget.)

She drowsily reaches out for her husband, realising as she makes contact that it's Ralph she's touching. Not Mac.

Oh. Right.

What would Mac be doing today? He was always so determined to make a festive holiday - first for his mother's sake (she always tended to go a little quiet at the anniversary of her husband's death, the poor sweet woman). Later on, because he never could get enough of indulging his nephew and niece- oh, that unfortunate Becky. She'll have a hard life ahead of her, with no parents or money.

A sense of guilt starts creeping over her at the thought. Mac had looked so very tired the last time she'd seen him, delivering the October alimony cheque, and she'd wanted to ask if he was well, but- no. It'd hardly been the sort of question to ask one's ex, a fortnight before the new marriage. But the shop had been struggling even when she'd left, and now he has a niece to care for- and he's still caught up in that patent lawsuit, isn't he?

 _Put it out of your mind, Ellen. He's not your worry anymore._

But the guilty little undercurrent keeps poisoning her day. All the while that Ralph and she are exchanging costly gifts, and kissing each other with approved zest. Going out for a monumentally expensive breakfast, laughing at his jokes- what woman doesn't have the knack, for enjoying herself in the moment? While underneath she's thinking about something else entirely, and the fellow never suspects. She'd done it often enough in the last few years of her marriage.

Maybe it isn't going well for them. Maybe there's a fourteen-year old child at the shop, crying her eyes out because there isn't any Christmas for her (now, that's a story whose refrain is far too familiar). Maybe they've shut the heat off in the absence of customers, wrapping up in blankets and huddling by the fireplace.

Ellen takes a bite of sugared blintz, softly yielding to the silver fork. Maybe he's hungry, going without today so there'll be enough for Becky. She won't ever know. She's lost the right to share his burdens, or even ask what's troubling him.

By the time breakfast is over, and Ralph is taking her to meet some of his business contacts (don't they have anything better to do, on Christmas? Doesn't she?), the battle's lost. She'll just have to start going to the shop again. Whatever it costs her in self-respect, whatever Ralph thinks about it. Just to be sure he's all right.

Maybe she doesn't love him anymore; but dammit, that needn't stop her indulging in small-town neighbourliness.

As much as he'll let her get away with, at least.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"One special Christmas delivery, just like I promised," Hans says heartily to Mac. "Though I'd have done it anyway just to get the blasted creature out of my nice clean post office…there was some sort of mixup, some fellow drove it down from the depot late last night. They didn't want it either."

It's a live goose. It honks at them.

"Ah well," Jack says philosophically. "I'll go get the meat axe-"

"Jack!" Becky says in outrage. "We can't kill it! Not on Christmas!"

"You sure? We really can't?"

"Not if Becky says no," Mac agrees. "Besides, do you know how long it takes to prepare them? We'll spend the whole day plucking feathers…though I wish we'd known yesterday. Or before the shops closed. What do I put on the serving platter, three more pies?"

"You're saying this as though extra pie is a bad thing."

"I've already baked four," Mac muses. "Plus two cakes, plus a pudding. It is just possible I've overdone it this year."

"I'm calling her Gertrude," Becky says. "Or at least, I will until we sell her to a farmer who'll butcher her himself- but not today. And not tomorrow either."

"If you two insist, then…I have four pounds of pastrami in my fridge," Jack offers.

"Who ever heard of Christmas pastrami?"

"Not me."

"Sorry, Unc."

"Huh," Mac says, with a gleam in his eye. "Guess we'll just have to improvise, won't we?"

It's a pretty ridiculous affair; but he and Jack and Becky contrive to have a very cheerful Christmas.


	21. just another day at the coffee shop

"And then," Penny says, "I think I'll try a chocolate chip cookie."

"Okay. Lemme get you a bag."

"Not with the coffee. In the coffee, all crumbled up."

There is no point asking Penny the why of anything. Becky grabs a cookie, thinks for a moment, and wraps a clean cloth around the comestible before fetching the hammer. Theirs is possibly the only coffee shop in Minnesota that keeps a fully stocked tool kit next to the refrigerator; but she can't imagine how the others do without it.

"So I had such an interesting morning. I went out to get my hair done."

She has six customers in line and a Penny story to contend with. _Uncle Mac, where are you when I need you?_

(Out playing hockey with Jack, as she'd insisted. Oops.)

"Did you?"

"No, not yet. Because I'd forgotten the nice old lady who used to do it for me retired last week, and I couldn't remember who she said I should go to instead...ooh, I'll have to go find that place next. You see, I thought I knew the right street, but I got lost."

"You got lost in Mission City?" the next customer asks. "How?"

Becky gives him his black coffee and an imploring look. He shrugs, leaves.

"Oh, well, I can get lost anywhere," Penny says, sipping her cookie-reinforced drink. "Even in my own house, once...so I went down the street, and just kept going, and going, and eventually I found myself at the lumber mill. You know. The old, haunted lumber mill."

"That's a good three miles away from downtown," Eudora says. Becky makes sure to smile at her; the librarian's command of Minnesota's interlibrary loan system is what keeps her and her uncle in books. "One iced coffee, not too heavy on the sugar."

"Here's one I prepared earlier," Becky says in relief.

"Thank you. Will you tell Mac, the latest edition of _2600_ just arrived."

"Sure thing."

"The old, haunted lumber mill," Penny repeats. "I thought, maybe I'd go say hello to the ghosts, cheer them up, so I went around looking for an entrance, but all the doors were locked. But I found a way in by accident." She giggles. "Actually, I fell down it."

"Now that I can believe," Luke says, with a isn't-she-something look for Becky. It's not as bad waiting on him as some of her other classmates; for one thing, he's kinda cute. She'd even thought about dating him, until the day he'd said he couldn't imagine living anywhere besides Mission City- and that is one family mistake she is definitely not going to repeat.

"Gingerbread, yeah?"

"With chocolate sprinkles?"

"With chocolate sprinkles," Becky agrees. "You didn't hurt yourself or anything, did you?"

"Oh, no! It was a nice smooth slide all the way. But it was just a little steep to climb up, so I went out to find another way out- and do you know what I saw?"

"Let me guess," Hans says. "Ghosts! Becky, my regular?"

"Sorry, but the bakery ran out of pumpkin mix. Can I sell you on a banana bread muffin with your coffee?"

"A sweet girl like you? You can do anything you like, honey." He winks at her. Becky rolls her eyes. Some of the older guys in town really push the envelope.

"Nooo, they weren't ghosts," Penny says thoughtfully. "They were spooky, and they were whispering, but when I found the light switch and turned it on, they didn't vanish. And then they started shooting at me, and I never heard of a ghost that tried to shoot anyone."

"Whoa," Becky says. "What?"

"Just what I said! They were shooting at me, and I ran! But they couldn't shoot at me very well because the whole room was full of crates, and I just hid behind them, and then I found a door that I could lock and locked it. So there I am," Penny says dramatically. "The heroine, trapped! In an old mop cupboard. It was just like that last play I was in- or was it the play before that?"

Sergeant Olson doesn't even notice when Becky hands him the usual apple fritter doughnut; he's whipped out his notebook and is scribbling like mad.

"But then, on stage I'd have someone else to rescue me. This time I didn't have a co-star...so you know what, Becky? It was really your uncle that saved me."

"Uh- was he there, or something?"

"Oh, no. But I just thought, he's so clever at making something out of nothing, what would he do in my place? Mix up all the chemicals lying around- of course, I didn't know what the right ones were. So I just put everything I could find in a bucket, and it started to fizzle and give off this terrible smell, and smoke, and I rushed out and they couldn't see me. Because of the smoke. But then I tripped and spilled it all over one of the crates, and it just went up like- whoosh! So then there was even more smoke, and just everything was on fire when I found the stairs, and I suppose those three men are still there trying to put the fire out. But they really shouldn't have been keeping anything there, anyway. I mean, the mill is for the ghosts..."

"Have you filed a police report yet, young lady?" Sergeant Olson says sternly. "I think we'd better be going down to the station."

"Oh, that'll be fun! I haven't been there since the time I accidentally crashed my car into your police car, I think."

Penny smiles. There is a speechless silence.

"Just as soon as I finish this drink. I thought I deserved a chocolate chip cookie after a morning like that, don't you?"


	22. Penny and Murdoc

_author's note: and I have yet to write the next part, so this is where we're leaving off for now_

Penny falls in love with Jacques Leroux at first sight. Fetching and exotic and so much better than the other candidates for the Phantom- far better than any actor she's ever seen in Mission City, in fact- that he inevitably wins the part. Also her heart.

Then she falls right out of love again, because he doesn't take her direction very well or indeed at all. Even if she's only a provincial with a couple of years of community college to back her up, she's still the producer here. Only he doesn't seem to understand that.

Then she falls in love with him again, because he does know so much about real acting, Hollywood and New York and so forth, and is happy to talk about it, and that's very exciting.

Then she notices how good he is at casual, thoughtless lying, gets the idea that he's just making it all up, and falls right back out of love again.

It keeps going back and forth like that, for several months, and just to confuse things he has to up and leave whenever she's finally got her feelings clear, so eventually she books the nicest table at the Gray Goose for them. The balcony seat, where people get engaged sometimes. Or break up dramatically.

"Only I don't want you to kiss me anymore, unless you like me," Penny says over the fish. "I mean, unless we're on stage. Then it'd be all right."

"Alas, my sweet Miss Parker. I must beg your pardon, for so toying with your heart...but verily I must confess, mine is given over to another. A devastating blonde, of attitude sympathetic and yet so cold towards me-"

"Oh! So Jack was right, and you're really in love with Mac."

Jacques is sort of the opposite of normal people; he stops being dramatic when he's surprised. (He always, always complains about her ad-libs, even the funniest.) So when he suddenly abandons tragic gesticulations, and spends five minutes drinking wine and just waiting for her to say something else, she knows she's right.

"I think that's awfully sweet. Mac's nice, and so are you."

He gives her a curious look from under his long (artificial) eyelashes, and Penny almost falls in love with him again. But manages not to.

"Penny, I'll tell you the truth. If you think you can bring yourself not to blab it, that is."

"Sure I can!" Maybe she's a little forgetful sometimes, but that doesn't mean she's rude.

"I dream of sweeping that man off his feet. I dream-" and now he's getting theatrical again- "I dream of taking him away from this wretched little town- theatre not included, of course- and taking him to live out his life somewhere he'll be properly appreciated. But I admit, I'm having a little difficulty working out how to persuade him. He's stubbornly self-reliant."

"Ooh. You want to court him, only you don't know how?"

He indulges in a long, drawn-out sigh. "Shall we agree I don't? If only to pass the time until dessert."

"The easiest way to get on his good side," Penny explains helpfully, "is to be nice to Becky. Mac always likes people who are nice to Becky."

"That...unfortunately, won't work. She doesn't like me, I've no idea why, but I suspect just buying one of her quilts won't do the trick."

"That's harder." Becky Grahme's sort of a puzzle to the whole town; she can be very friendly sometimes, but then she's always reading. The one time anyone let her captain a game of capture-the-flag, the other players all got squelched, and people said it wasn't really fair even though she'd played by the rules. (Nobody had thought of putting in a rule about kites. Or washing machines. Or borrowing the municipal backhoe.) "The easiest way to make Becky happy is to do nice things for Mac."

"Rather bringing us back to the original problem, I believe."

Penny concentrates. "She likes...complicated things. A really, really complicated way of being nice to Mac. And you know what else, he likes stories. About science and faraway places, he used to love telling her stories like that. I think he still does."

"In sort, I should woo my beloved by telling him implausibly exciting travelogues and inventing a needlessly convoluted plan? Have I muddled this up with my day job?"

"What is your day job, anyway?" She's always been curious.

"Bloodletting," Jacques says. "It's come back into style, you know. With leeches."

That doesn't sound any more sensible than the other explanations she's heard.

But then, actors are supposed to have funny lives.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

 _December '89_

 _Dear Aunt Betty,_

 _oh, I wish you'd been here to see the fun we're having in Los Angeles! (Though I suppose you'll know about it anyway). The choir coming twelfth in the singing competition isn't so bad really, considering how many there were, and anyway they were allowed to sing a song for the tv broadcast, which was the important part. I've finally been on a real set, and I've had all sorts of conversations with actresses, and agents and things..._

 _...and then there was a mixup about the seats on the flight home, because they'd been overbooked and there was only one left- and the next flight was for after Christmas. Mac wouldn't go without Becky, and she wouldn't go without him, and Jacques said he wasn't even going back to Minnesota just yet. And I was the one with all the money, so I had to stay._

 _I mean, the two of them were being perfectly ridiculous. Talking about what sort of tent they ought to get, and whether they should spend the week volunteering at a homeless shelter so they'd have somewhere to go for Christmas dinner- how awful is that? I absolutely had to insist, that since it was my fault that their holiday plans had fallen through, I'd pay for the hotel rooms and everything. Though it wasn't, for once! But I'm getting to that._

 _They still weren't listening, though, until I was practically crying saying that it'd ruin my Christmas if I'd spoilt theirs (I mean, I was crying already, but I mean for real and not just stagey). So eventually I got them to agree, only the hotel was full up, so we had to move. To a much nicer one. (I'd booked top-floor rooms in advance, you see. Only I wish I hadn't, because I'd forgot Mac's afraid of heights- but he said it was all right, as long as he was careful about not looking down from the window. I think Becky likes the view though.)_

 _...and us girls just couldn't keep up with them! Of course, Jacques knows all about Los Angeles, which is just so, so big- I mean, I have a good sort of idea what the Hollywood part of it is like, but there's about ten different cities stacked on top of that, and I think Mac wanted to go to every single one. Considering how hard he works, I'd have thought that some rest would be good for him. But he didn't think so. Neither did Jacques._

 _So while they were getting up at six in the morning to go exploring and everything, we slept in and I took Becky out for sunbathing and shopping and relaxation sort of things. She works awfully hard, studying and so forth- trying to get a scholarship to Western Tech isn't easy. But Mac and I ganged up on her and took away all her sewing stuff, and everything, so she'd have to have a nice long rest. I think after the first day she started enjoying herself. Though we couldn't exactly stop her reading. She would keep buying all these books._

 _And she was so silly about missing Christmas with Jack Dalton. I mean, I guess he's funny and eveything, but- well, he always steals some of the bottles whenever he shows up at one of my parties, and after all he's only a taxi driver. And he's been in prison- I do remember what you always told me, that a good criminal should never get caught. He's an awfully bad one._

 _I mean, why would you want the town drunk when someone as exciting as Jacques is around? Because that was the plan, really; I'd pretend to muddle everything up so that Mac could have a lovely warm Christmas with Jacques. And it worked. And I was going to tell Becky all about how clever we'd been, but she seemed so sad I didn't know how to say it._

 _But Mac and Jacques are happy. I think it's going to do them both a world of good..._


	23. Ashton

_Author's note: I took some inspiration for this from "What Becky Saw", by my co-author Tanista._

A sandcastle: but not just any sandcastle. A solid three feet by three feet square, with a corresponding moat, and turrets that she's built up to reach her shoulder height (well, when she's sitting). Walls protected with jagged seashells. Four bits of white satin tied to sticks serve as corner flags.

It is the most extravagant thing in sight (Jacques had raised an eyebrow when she'd asked him to recommend a totally isolated stretch of beach, but to do him credit, had found her one). And she's finished it all herself.

"I did it, Chris," Becky whispers. "I really did it."

She wonders, sometimes, what life would have been like if her brother hadn't died in that crash. If he'd made the move east with her. Easier, with both of them to face down Mission City? Harder, if Uncle Mac had been forced to give them up?

What's happened has happened, though, and she tries not to think about the past too much. But they'd been looking forward to their summer off so much...agreeing that next time they had time and sun and the perfect beach day, they'd build a sand fort big enough for them both to sit in.

And then the accident.

So after years of inland Minnesota, it's nice to be able to put this to bed at last. Faster then she'd expected, actually, it helps having an uncle who understands structural engineering. Even if he isn't here just now...off with Jacques again, for a wine tasting. Weird. Mac doesn't drink much, and when he does it's usually hard liquor - but then, they are in California.

"I wonder what you'd do now, Chris," Becky murmurs. "Go buy an ice cream? Swim? Watch girls?"

As though the words have inspired the reality, a girl pops into sight from behind a sand dune, her bikini strings fluttering behind her as she runs. Coming along the beach with a frantic intensity that doesn't seem quite natural, in this lazy warm sunshine (to think that it's winter back home!) Splashing through the shallows. Becky finds herself puzzled. Anybody in that much of a hurry ought to be running on the sand proper, which is hard-packed and would offer easier footing.

Like she wants to get away, but doesn't want to be tracked.

On impulse, Becky pulls out one of her flags, and waves it in the air.

XXXXXXXXX

"Don't follow me," her brother always says to Ashton Cooke, when he leaves.

He has to order her every time, because she wants to know what he's been up to. Murdoc was fourteen, she only nine, when he rescued the two of them from an obscurely deprived farm in the Sussex downs. (When her childhood started- because what had happened before certainly hadn't counted.) Since then he's made sure she's enjoyed every conceivable comfort, had her every wish granted, except one- just what it is he's doing to pay all the bills.

Well. She's a week shy of her twenty-third birthday, will be graduating from Cambridge in a matter of months, and more than mature enough to learn what's going on. It isn't something law-abiding; otherwise he wouldn't have kept her on the move like that, with a new flat and a new name every three months. Something profitable, obviously. And she doubts it's sexual. Her brother's incapacity for romance strikes her as indifference, not abhorrence.

So she'd set herself to finding out.

Now- with a stitch in her side, three assassins with guns after her, and a desperate need to find her brother- Ashton is rather wishing she hadn't bothered. She pounds along the beach, keenly desperate for a hiding place, or a street outfit to replace the one she'd had to abandon, when they'd started shooting her rowboat into fragments-

small miracle! A friendly face, a flag beckoning her into a sandcastle of simply preposterous size. It's the work of a moment to leap the parapet. Another, to gratefully hide herself under the pile of flowery towels.

Her benefactress glances down at her. Blue eyes, hair that shines a burnished copper in the Californian sun. Not just friendly, but familiar, somehow.

"Who's after you?"

"Three men- they say they're police officers, but they aren't." _At least, I hope not!_ "I don't- I don't know how to make anyone believe they're not."

"How d'you know, then?"

"I saw them murder someone. In cold blood, I think it was a mob hit." She risks peeking over the castle wall. They're distant, but moving in, slow but sure.

Those warm blue eyes study hers. Sympathetic, but assessing.

"Okay."

"You believe me?"

Her benefactress shrugs.

"Maybe I'm wrong. But if I'm choosing between saving an innocent, or punishing the guilty..."

XXXXXXXXX

"Hello," Penny calls, cheerfully. "I brought you an ice cream! I had to guess what you'd like, so I told them double chocolate, with chocolate sauce and chocolate sprinkles and chocolate chunks…"

"That was a pretty good guess," Becky says, putting down her book with a smile. "Thanks."

"What happened to that sand castle you were going to build?" Penny asks, settling down with her own demure iced lemonade. "You said that's why you didn't want to go shopping with me- oh, I bet you've just been reading this whole time, haven't you?"

"Some reading," Becky says, in a rather slow voice like her uncle's drawl, "has definitely been happening. Yeah."

"Silly Becky. You could read back in Minnesota."

"Also true," Becky agrees, with lazy good humour. She pulls the deck chair into an upright position, and starts licking at her cone. "So, find any nice bargains?"

"Oh, lots! I found the loveliest pink feather boa- brand new, not all ragged and moth-eaten. And some swishy velvet cloaks, lots of things the theatre's been needing. You should have come too. Hello, officers," she adds. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

"Not exactly," the foremost one says. "This is very important. We're tracking a dangerous criminal, a murderer who's just fled the scene of the crime. A woman-" his eye rests on Becky, appreciatively. "Maybe a head taller than you, long blonde hair, striped zebra bikini. Have you seen anyone like that along here?"

Becky considers. "No. And I've been on this beach all morning, so I ought to have noticed."

"Like I said," one of the others puts in. "We should have gone back the other way, that's where the girl was heading."

"Isn't that awful," Penny says, shivering dramatically. "A murderess, and not just on stage! Becky, let's go back to the hotel, quick."

"I'm pretty comfortable here," Becky says. "Maybe I'll get some more reading done, who knows?"

"Oh- Becky Grahme, you are hopeless."

"Thanks." She nods at the uniformed men, as they depart. "You know what I really would like, though?"

"You just name it, and I'll get it!"

"Just some alone time. I mean, I spent a week cooped up in a hotel room with three other girls- this is the first time I've had a minute to myself all week. Why don't we meet up at the hotel for lunch around one? And then I promise you can take me shopping or whatever for the rest of the afternoon."

Penny blinks. "Lunch, on top of all that ice cream?"

"Sure. Like Jack says, you want to balance out your four major food groups. Ice cream, pizza, potato chips-"

"Oh, him," Penny interrupts. "Becky, I don't think you want to hang around people like that."

"People like what?"

"Criminals! I can't think why your uncle lets him run the shop on Wednesdays. Isn't he afraid that Jack might steal something, or run off with the cash register or something?"

Becky starts chewing into her waffle cone. "Jack wouldn't do that. Penny, you can't always trust to labels. Or take what people say at face value."

"I know you can't take what Jack says at face value. Do you know, he made friends with one of my grandmother's business associates, and- and I don't quite know what happened, but he gave Jack a lot of money for an investment, and something went wrong, and he never saw it again. But in three weeks, Jack was in prison. I just don't think he's wholesome."

"Okay, so maybe you don't want to go trusting him with bundles of unmarked bills or anything," Becky says, wiping ice cream off her mouth. "Maybe think about it this way. Your grandmother was a criminal, too. And very proud of it, she must have said so to just about everybody she met."

"Well, I never! That isn't the same thing at all!"

"No," Becky says, very quietly. "Because your grandmother would never have agreed to give up a whole day out of her week, so that my overworked uncle could have a rest. Penny, we trust him because he's been there for us. We tide him over when the taxi business is slack, because we know he'll repay the favour when we need one. When you're living as close to the edge as we do, it makes all the difference in the world to know there's someone you can count on- and for us, that's Jack Dalton. So yeah. I am missing him, and maybe there was nothing to be done about those plane tickets- but we're out here, having a good time, and he's probably going to spend Christmas with nothing but a whiskey bottle for company. And I feel like we're letting him down."

Penny looks distinctly unconvinced. "I still think there's much nicer people in Mission City. Like Jacques. Now, Jacques..."

XXXXXXXXX

"Oh my god," Ashton says, when Becky unearths her (she's been breathing through a strategically placed straw, quiet as a mouse). "I thought that she'd never leave."

"Penny can be like that," Becky agrees. "Or worse- be glad she didn't start on any theatre anecdotes, or you'd have been stuck under there all day. So now what? Do you want to go to the police, tell them about the impersonators?"

"I can't," Ashton says, brushing sand off herself. "See, my brother's all wrapped up in it too. I have to get in touch with him before we do anything else- he has a permanent suite at the Hotel Bel-Air, I think that's where we need to start."

"That's a coincidence, I'm staying there too. So we might as well go together."

"...you're not going to let me out of your sight, are you?"

"Nope."

"But I thought you wanted to sit and read? I mean- this might be dangerous."

"Sit and read, when there's an adventurous mystery going on?" Becky asks. "Not on your life!"

"I'm really hoping," Ashton mutters, "that it isn't going to come to that…"


	24. Faith and Hope

_okay, so it's been a couple months, and I'm no further along finishing that Ashton-and-Becky story._

 _So we're just skipping on to the next part. February of Becky's senior year, and a rewrite of a certain episode..._

His life being what it is, Mac's reaction to getting caught in a bear trap is one of stoical resignation. Maybe it hurts like blue blazes; but at some level he was expecting this.

"Everything was just going too well," he growls, struggling to release the springs. "Jack sober, and Becky almost a graduate, and a paid vacation for me- of course something had to happen! Something always happens!"

The anger's a tool, as much as his knife. If he goads himself with it, pushes as hard as he can- there. His foot's free. Mac strips off the boot, fast as he can stand (dammit, he'll have to break in a new pair now, and good ones aren't cheap). Examines the wound beneath. Fearful amount of blood, god knows about the tendon…anyone in their right mind would have this seen to by a doctor. But that means medical bills, treatments that he can't afford. And for that matter, he's miles from anywhere. Just getting out of the woods is going to be his first problem.

Nobody's around to hear. He starts cursing freely, while rummaging in his rucksack for the first-aid kit. Disinfectant and bandages before he does anything else-

"Young man! Such language!"

"You try getting caught in a bear trap," Mac splutters. His catastrophic idiocy is about par for the course, but this is just getting weird. "Am I seeing double?"

"No, no, we really are sisters," one of the ladies says. "I'm Faith."

"And I'm Hope….oh, you poor man. I think he's fainted."

"Oh goodness. Oh my goodness, whatever now?"

"We'll just have to bring him back to the house, won't we? Now look, if I go get that little red wagon, and you can start bandaging him up…"

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Blue walls. Blue fixings. Blue bedspread. Everything in this room's blue except his shirt, and they've wrapped a blue shawl around that.

"We call it the daisy room," Hope had said cheerily.

Maybe he's not thinking straight yet.

"So I was doin' some wolf tracking," Mac explains, watching Faith fuss about his dressings. She seems competent enough at it, for a wonder. "For a place called the Phoenix Foundation. They do a lot of endangered animals stuff."

"Now, isn't that nice! A fellow animal lover, how marvellous."

That stings. "How's it look? Am I going to be lame or anything?"

"Oh, no, don't you worry about it a bit! I'm a trained nurse. But you will have to stay in bed for quite a while…two weeks, or even three."

"Three weeks? I can't stay here, I have a shop I need to get back to." One he's almost recalling with affection. Could be the colour scheme, but something here is unsettling him. "Besides, I- well, I'm grateful, but I can't afford to pay you anything."

"Oh, that's all right," Hope promises. "Maybe we're just a couple of old ladies, but I'm sure we can manage house-room and a few bowls of soup for an invalid."

"But my shop- and Becky will be worrying about me. Have you got a telephone?"

Faith shakes her head. "Hope and I don't hold with the darned things. You'd have to walk down to Ideal Corners, and that's all of twenty miles."

"Walk? You don't have a car?"

"Don't hold with those, either. Once a month a lady from the church comes by, so we can get to town- and doesn't she complain about what the undergrowth does to her truck!"

If he's really lucky, Jack will take over running the shop once Becky's finished school vacation. The place'll be in shambles by the time he gets home.

Then again…Phoenix sure won't pay him now, leaving the job half finished. And free medical care is a heck of a reason to stay.

"I'd hate to be any trouble."

"Oh, you won't be!" the sisters exclaim in unison.

Maybe it's the spontaneous kindness that's weirding him out.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"So. You fill the vacuum cleaner with water like so, glug glug glug- of course, on Halloween I'll be using tomato sauce. To look like blood."

"Why did I have to say it?" Becky asks, moving well out of the way. "What made me think that encouraging you to build anything would be a good idea?"

"You were bored," Jack says succinctly. "Anyway, I'm really getting into this! I've reversed the engine, so instead of sucking in dust, it'll splurt out liquid- and then who's gonna win Mission City's spookiest house competition, huh?"

He points the hose at the makeshift cardboard target he's set up, and flicks the on switch with considerable drama. The vacuum cleaner gives a sad little moan. A trickle of water falls out of the end, and stops.

"…okay, maybe I need to go back to the drawing board."

"Jack, what made you think this could possibly work?"

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Next time Mac wakes up, he's handcuffed to the bedstead.

"We really thought that you were just a poor unfortunate hiker," Faith says. "But then you said Phoenix Foundation…and of course, our guilty consciences. What else were we to do?"

At first he's speechless out of shock, then out of policy. She can't be meaning to leave it at that.

(Part of his mind, the quiet Mission City native who thought that settling down with Ellen was a good idea, is refusing to believe this can even be happening.)

"I suppose you know all about us now…so of course we can't let you leave. But then, you did bring it on yourself. And we'll look after you so nicely! It's been ever so long since we had anyone to stay."

Hope enters with a heavily-laden dinner tray. The promised soup, and rolls and mushroom casserole, and a whole plate of peanut butter cookies. Under any other circumstance it'd look great.

"Now, if you'll promise to be good, I'll take off one of the handcuffs and you may have a spoon. But only if you promise."

It's on the tip of his tongue to refuse her, but- "Dishwasher."

"What was that?" Hope asks, leaning forward.

Loading the dishwasher, while a sardonic Englishman had been dipping biscotti into a cup of Darjeeling. _Now, drugged food may be an entertaining concept for the movies, but under almost any circumstances your captors would get better results with a hypodermic. If they're bothering at all, it'll be for the sheer intimidation value…and as I expect you're aware, intimidation is rather easier to resist when you aren't starving._

Murdoc's got some weird interests in life. "Sorry, never mind. I promise."

Faith smiles at him and lets him have the spoon. Cream of mushroom soup, it's actually pretty tasty.

"We had such a long debate, while you were sleeping," Hope says. "I thought at first we might want to just put you away quietly. Bury you in the garden, perhaps."

"Hope," Faith says rebukingly, as at a sister's mild faux pas.

"But Faith convinced me that it might be nice to have someone else about the house again. To cook blueberry pies for, and play cards with. I do hope you like bridge."

"Um. Are you talking about keeping me here forever?"

"Not forever," Faith says. "Twenty years, perhaps. Thirty. We're a long-lived family, you know."

They can't possibly be serious. Can they?

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"What if I tried rejiggering one of the coffee machines? That expresso pump's pretty powerful-"

"Jack. Don't even think about it." They're both edgy tonight; Mac had promised to be back the Friday before school started. Now it's Saturday, and still no sign; Becky bites a thread off and starts working in magenta. "Do you think we should call search and rescue? I don't like this."

"So he's slacking a little bit," Jack says, carelessly tossing a coffee mug from hand to hand. "He's on vacation, you gotta let the man breathe."

"It's not a vacation. It's contract work for the Phoenix Foundation."

"Which is a great reason not to call in the troops, or we'll have his employers thinking he's a disaster. C'mon, you know he can take care of himself."

"Yeah, but wolf tracking…maybe he should have taken a gun. He said he didn't need one and I agreed, but now I'm wondering."

"You know the stats on wolf fatalities. Probably stands a better chance of being run over by my taxi, whenever he does get back to civilisation."

"What a rotten sense of humour you've got," Becky mutters, unsmiling. "I've got the route he was going to take, I could try following it. Course, it does mean skipping school."

"Well, don't look at me. Somebody's gotta keep the shop running, and you know you can't do that part. People'll talk."

"I didn't even have to ask. Thanks," Becky says gratefully. "I dunno how your taxi business manages."

"Eh. Not even worrying about it these days," Jack says. "Here's the real problem, though. Suppose Mac gets back the day after you leave, and I have to explain why I let you charge off after him? You'll end up in a wacky loop-de-loop chasing after each other."

"I should have made a plan. This is what happens when I don't make plans." She tosses the embroidery aside. "But you know what? I've sent in all my college applications already."

"So?"

"So, school doesn't actually matter at this point…"

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"It's like this," Faith explains. "We have a million dollars in a cookie jar in the kitchen."

"Drug money," Hope says, clicking her tongue. "We used to keep a boarding house closer to town. Then this gang came along and murdered one of our boarders."

"A nice old man, even if he was cooking the books for them. He left us all the money in his will, and I must say, I thought we thoroughly deserved it."

"So we sold the house and moved up to our hunting cabin, just in case someone should come asking nosy questions. After all, we didn't know whether the police might want us to give the money back. Or the gang."

"Now that just wouldn't be any fun at all," Hope says. "Besides, we want to set up an animal protection fund. For the gray wolf."

"I think the government's doing a pretty adequate job at that," Mac says weakly.

"Well, you can't be too careful. So there it all is. What else can we do, except keep you?"

For a moment, as he's finishing the delicately-spiced rice pudding, Mac allows himself to actually think about this crazy proposition. He's had a wretchedly hard life, after all. Constantly fretting about money. Anxiously trying not to offend customers. Crisis after crisis after crisis.

But now that a miracle's arrived, offering a way out...he was actually enjoying himself at some level, wasn't he? Fighting his way through life. Mission City isn't much of a place, but it's still way better than being cuffed to a bed for the rest of his life.

Besides, there's always Becky to think of.

"This gang. Did anybody ever mention Ralph Jerico?"

"Funny you should say that," Faith says. "Do you know, our boarder was his accountant. But what's that got to do with it?"

"Because I hate the guy's guts. He stole my wife away, she's Ellen Jerico now."

Murdoc again. _The more truth you can get into your lies, the better. Emotionally as well as factually._

"And I know he's been trying to get a big drug-running operation off the ground, but he blackmailed me to keep quiet about it. If anything, I'd love to give him a poke in the eye for you two."

Faith gives him a curious look. "That doesn't sound like anything an official Phoenix Foundation agent would say."

"What's Phoenix got to do with it? I'm only doing the wolf tracking project for them."

"Oh dear," Hope says, blushing. "What an awful misunderstanding...our sister works for them, you see. In the espionage branch, you can see how we'd think the worst."

Huh.

This must be one weird think tank.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Becky isn't happy.

There's her uncle's path, which is clear enough. He wasn't going out of his way to disguise it, after all; every so often, she sees sap bleeding from the trees he's used as knife-throwing targets. Partly to mark a trail, partly just to keep his hand in.

She touches the revolver at her waist, heavy and uncomfortable. Jack had insisted.

"You're a young woman, getting into who knows what kind of trouble. Better safe than sorry."

"But you think that he's fine. And that I'm overreacting."

"Sure, but- can't be too careful, right?"

Maybe he had a point. Because there's someone else on this trail- several someones- and they're sticking to her uncle's trail so closely that they have to be following him. She can't imagine what for, but she doesn't like this all.

Here, in the clearing- there's blood on the leaves. Stale, dried blood, and a few desultory ants still crawling over a bear trap.

Not allowing herself to think about what this might mean, she follows the solitary trail out. As quietly and invisibly as she can, until she reaches a house.

Three men, trying to get through a window. She catches a glimpse of something red and shaggy hitting the foremost one in the face; he screams, falls backwards onto the other two.

"My eyes!"

"What the hell was that?" one of them asks.

"He smells like paprika now," the other says, sniffing. "A lot of paprika."

Gotta be her uncle in there. Who else would have thought up a dodge like that?

"Two old ladies and a guy with a broken leg? How the hell aren't we inside this house yet?"

They've hurt him. They've hurt her Mac.

Becky steps out into the open. "Hands up!"

"You can't shoot all of us," one of them says, whipping out his own gun. "Not before we shoot you."

"Yeah? So which one of you is feeling lucky?" she asks, gesturing. "Cos even if you do shoot me, I could definitely hit one of you- and paprika over there can't even open his eyes, let alone handle his gun right now."

There's a moan of agreement to that last comment.

"She's sure not a cop, anyway...and I'm not getting paid enough to deal with crazy teenagers on top of everything else. This thing's been a bust from start to finish."

The first one sighs in agreement. They drop their guns.

"Uncle Mac!" Becky shouts. "Everything okay in there?"

"Yeah!"

He limps out, using what looks like a broken hat rack for a crutch. Two little old ladies scurry past him and start handcuffing the criminals.

Becky moves in close, hugs her uncle in relief while he looks at her in amazement.

"You really held a gun on them?"

"Why not? I took all the bullets out first thing."

The henchmen collectively groan.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"Two hundred thousand apiece? And we'll fend off whoever comes after you, be it feds or the drug runners."

"A hundred thousand, and that's our final offer," Hope says, handing around another round of hot blueberry pie. "It is our money, you know."

"Everybody," Mac intervens. "I don't think we have as much as we thought we did. There's a bundle of a hundred and twenty thousand or so that's alright, but the rest of it...I think the inks look wrong."

One of the henchmen grabs a pile, examines it and nods in disgust. "Yeah, it figures. That'd be the money earmarked for Jerico. The rest was meant to go for payroll. To think we were supposed to be putting our lives at risk for fakes...but say, you recognised the funny money awfully quick. Sure you're not in the business?"

"I've got a friend who's taught me a few things," Mac says slyly.

"A hundred and twenty thousand, six of us, so that's twenty thousand dollars for each of us. Could be worse."

"Ten thousand," Faith says sternly. "We have the gray wolf to think of, you know."

The henchmen look at each other. "Not much of a salary…"

"But it's better than working for Jerico, that's for sure."

"All the pie we can eat?"

"Every day," Hope promises.

"Done."

"And we'll give you enough of a share to make sure that leg's looked after properly," Faith says to Mac. "I insist."

"If I had...five thousand, six hundred and sixty dollars on top of that, that'd be perfect. I could really use my jeep back. And a little left over, to take my favourite niece out for a lobster dinner."

"Of course," Hope agrees. "But remember, no telling this Nikki Carpenter that you know the Phoenix Foundation has...other proclivities. She might start wondering where you'd heard it."

"Promise."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"You know very well I object to drinking out of a bone china cup," Murdoc says at the shop the next day. "I-"

"You get what you get and you'll like it," Mac says, very cocky.

Amazing difference, since the first time he'd met the man.

Quite soon, the assassin reflects to himself. Quite soon indeed.


	25. Ralph, again

Enough of this, Ralph Jerico decides.

He's waited for months for the town to shun Angus MacGyver of their own accord, considering his theatrical going-ons; but it hasn't happened. Everyone's so charmed by this Leroux character that the gossip's envious, not disgusted.

And today, he's come home, planning a piece of violence or pleasure or both at once- but no wife is waiting for him. Just a note.

 _I'm not writing dear, because you're not. So I'll just say this- Ralph, I'm leaving. The Phoenix Foundation's programme for abused women will make sure I never have to see you again- and that's just how I want it._

 _And I still don't love Mac, but in his own way he has integrity. And that's something you never will._

 _Ellen_

There's no profit in destroying the man's reputation. Not now. But it'll be a victory, and that's all he cares about now.

He fetches the incriminating documents from the safe, and drives down to the police station to find utter chaos. Shouting, and running amuk, and general disorderliness. Criminal or not (he doesn't think of himself as one), it's enough to make him quite despair for the future of Mission City.

But he isn't Ralph Jerico for nothing; the force of his name and position is enough to gain him an immediate private meeting with the police chief. He's briskly efficient, as he lays out the letters. Documentary proof of criminal behaviour. Just the right touch of reluctance, to turn in a man formerly so dear to Ellen…but the eventual decision that justice must prevail. All very satisfying.

"Breaking into a federal prison, just to begin with. That must be a felony."

"Oh, I'm sure we can work up a few charges. Although we can't exactly bring him in just now, can we?"

"Why not? Why ever not?"

"Didn't you hear?" the chief says, with dark amusement. "Mac was kidnapped early this morning. We were at a loss for a motive, since they can hardly expect a ransom…and then you walk in and hand me your confession on a silver platter. Wouldn't have thought you to be the sort that suffers from a guilty conscience, Jerico. Or were you hoping to bribe me into overlooking it?"

"My confession? That was nothing of the sort!"

"Wasn't it? Means, motive, opportunity. It'll look just fine on my record, fingering a suspect for Mission City's biggest-ever crime in not even twelve hours."

"You'll never make it stick."

"Won't I? A lot of nasty little details will come out at the trial, you know. Don't think we've been utterly blind to all your drug-running attempts." The chief is smiling now, and not nicely.

"Then- I would like to see my lawyer."

"Oh, you'll get one. Funny business, isn't it? If you'd come forward about this any other time, Mac would have been an instant pariah. But as it is now…you've probably done the only thing that could get people feeling sympathetic towards him. When we find him and bring him home, if he's still alive, they'll probably throw him a parade."

A cold northern draught sweeps through the office, as Ralph Jerico realises just how tightly he's knotted the noose for himself. Even if he gets off (he'll get off, they haven't any proof and money can buy anything)- nobody in Mission City will ever trust him again. The town he's striven so hard to save.

Damn that Angus MacGyver, anyway.

Damn him to hell.


	26. Christmas, 1987

_for my new year's resolution, I've decided to just post all the random bits of fic that I've accumulated for this series. Less anxiety over coherence, more fic!_

 _With that in mind, here's a belated and rather twisted Christmas ficlet. Set in 1987, in Mission City but before all the crazy shenanigans start._

"You don't look happy enough for Christmas," Becky says, as the taxi driver beats a hasty retreat into the cafe. "Cheer up, what is it?"

Jack shrugs, groans a little as he strips out of his soaking wet coat. "Fare for my sins. Your uncle's over at the Jerico place, which means yours truly is gonna have to go back out there at some point to retrieve him. Bet it starts to snow instead of just raining."

"Oh- you've got to be kidding," Becky says, looking at the gritty scarf Jack's hung on the hatstand. She quickly removes it to the tablecloth laundry hamper, for a good wash later. "On Christmas Eve, what does he think he's doing? I've been waiting for him to get off the counter all day."

"Free dinner," Jack says succinctly, pulling off his boots. "Dear old Ralph is down in Minneapolis, with a promise to be back in time for brunch tomorrow. So if you're a neglected little trophy wife, feeling lonely around the holidays, maybe you invite your ex around for a cherry liqueur and see which way the wind's blowing-"

Becky winces. "He doesn't have to be doing this."

"Sure, but- you know Mac. He's a sucker for riding to the rescue, probably figures she needs him more right now," Jack says softly. "After all, we know how we're spending tomorrow, right?"

"That's true," Becky agrees, absently hugging him. "All safe and warm and together. Real cosy."

"And with any luck, maybe he can sneak out a bottle for me," Jack says wistfully. "Been ages since I treated myself to the good stuff- I mean, sure a guy can live on beer alone, but you ever seen Jerico's liquor cabinet? Sixty year old whiskey, real champagne, the works. If he swipes me a decent tequila, I'll forgive him just about anything."

Becky thinks about the present hidden at the back of the upstairs closet, and has to work hard at not snickering. "Even if he's...um..."

"Even if he's um," Jack agrees. "Not like I can charge over and lay any claim on him, you know?"

His voice is starting to wobble a little- the line between joke and truth is wearing thin, now- and it's obvious they both need a distraction. "And getting out of all the work, too! Shame on Unc."

"Why? Thought you pretty much had it under control by now."

"Oh, so? I need somebody to taste-test the stuffing. And the puddings. And who's gonna help me roll out the gingerbread and decorate it?" Becky asks, a mock-quiver in her lips.

"...I'll be right there."

That's the nicest thing about Jack, Becky reflects. It's always so easy to cheer him up.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"It caught fire," Ellen announces, peering into the oven. "So much for my casserole."

So much for the stolid, virtuous exterior he'd been trying to keep up. Mac starts to giggle, leaning awkwardly against the expensive marble countertop.

"Just like old times again. You trying to put on a culinary tour-de-force and fluffing it all up- how come Ralph can't fork out for you to get some lessons in this stuff, huh? How- how not to boil water, and all that."

At her glare, he gives up and starts outright laughing.

"In my defense, I'm drunk." A lot more drunk than he should be after one glass, but the brandy she's given him is a surprisingly potent vintage. And as Jack says, he's useless at holding his liquor anyway. "Drunk enough that I shouldn't be driving home, that's for sure."

In his current state of inebriation, the joke strikes him as manifestly hilarious. Ellen glares at him again as she slams the oven shut; but the touch of her fingers, as she takes his arm, is soft and pleasantly womanly.

"You need to lie down," he hears, her voice seemingly coming from somewhere very far off. "Come on- come on. It'll be all right."

He lets her guide him, blindly (it seems easier to move when he's not looking), so feels a certain relief when he bumps into something. Feels a certain distant alarm at the realisation that it's a bed, wide and luxurious and decidedly not meant for the likes of a broke, small-town barista.

"There now," she says approvingly, trying to unzip his coat. He whimpers in alarm, falls atop of it defensively. It's one of the most expensive things he owns, an old present from Jack, and he's protective about it at the best of times.

She hisses at him and starts pulling off his boots instead. That seems all right.

"You're not in much shape to do anything right now, are you?" her voice asks. A little clinical (god help them both, why did she always have to be so stiff?) "I didn't think you'd be getting to this state until much later in the evening."

Clarity breaks over his head like a bucket of icy water. "Until? Ellen, what'd you have in mind?"

"It'll be okay," she murmurs. "Tonight, everything will be all right. You don't have to be lonely."

He wants to reassure her, despite everything, and so is pleased when he finds himself sitting up properly, looking down at her.

Only it's not his Ellen, not the grey-clothed woman who he expects. The girl sitting in front of him is only a child.

"I'd rather be lonely," she's saying, a determined pout in her voice, and the memory snaps into place; this is the old Stuart homestead, this is the Christmas when she locked herself in the attic and wouldn't come out for any entreaties.

This happened. Is happening.

"Ellen," he says, confused by the clear, calm nature of his voice, unbroken and unslurred by drink. "Don't do this to yourself, okay?"

"I'm already going to be punished for doing this," she says, tucking herself close. "Dad asked me what I wanted for Christmas- this is what I want, okay? Just to be me. Just to be here, quiet, and not to have to listen to any of those boors he's friends with, or pretend or anything."

"I could go down and say you want him to get rid of everybody else." That, he can understand. Wanting family selfishly, his mother all to him and Allison instead of waiting on half the town, that makes sense.

She sticks out her tongue; an odd gesture on her face, because she doesn't seem to be quite sure how to do it. "That'd be worse."

Now she just isn't making any sense at all. He kneels down next to her, tries to be as comforting as he knows how. "Do you want to come to my house for Christmas? I guess they wouldn't mind, if it makes you happier."

"I want- I want," she says, and starts to sob, big tears welling up against the sleeve of his sweater. "I don't mind you. If you were here, it'd be okay. Or if we ran away together. Or if we both just weren't, that'd be nice too-"

"C'mon, Ellen, don't talk crazy." He remembers how this ended; how he promised her his best knife, and a date out skating next Friday, if only she'd stop crying, go downstairs, tell them that she was herself again; and Ellen, after whispering that she was so tired of pretending, had finally agreed to do so. He remembers the deep quiver of Mr Stuart's mustache, while he'd firmly told an adult twice his size to be nicer to his daughter, and the bewildered nod of agreement he'd received in return.

"I want you back," Ellen is saying, close to tears; and he'd reach a hand out to touch her but it feels like the whole world might flip upside down if he even tries. There's a hollowness in his head and belly that hardly seems attributable to a few alcoholic ounces- what's happening to him, what's wrong...

 _Suppose you just weren't here..._

He supposes; and the supposition is as easy as anything; suddenly he's light as air.

Ghostly, eased of all his burdens, he floats up. Out of the house, above Mission City, with a fair wind blowing and who know what waiting for him on the horizon- free at last.

Except for one little tie, thin as cobweb but oh so binding, and his frustrated tug at it is useless, unavailing. He follows it down to the source, intent on snipping the cord away.

Here's a trailer park, subdued for all the tacky ornamentation and festive lights strewn helter-skelter across the way. It takes no thought at all to find the one with the taxi parked out front, and a brave, slightly pathetic hand-made wreath tacked to the front; he floats inside without a second thought.

Becky's hardly visible; her body's buried beneath a mound of blankets, her face pressed into Jack's tacky little sofa. A few soft moans, of pain and sadness, are all that indicate she's even breathing.

Jack, by contrast, is all too visible; wan, with a harried look in his eyes, and his beloved flight jacket hanging off him. "Becky, want to help me with this? It's almost time to add the sugar sauce."

Another moan by way of response. Jack sighs as he closes the oven, sits down on the cheap metal chair he's crammed in next to the sofa. "At the very least, I'm going to need somebody to help me eat all this Christmas pastrami."

"Eat it yourself," Becky mumbles, not moving. "I bet you're hungry enough."

From the strained expression on Jack's face, she's probably right; he licks his lips, swallows. "Look. I know this is a hard time of year for you-"

"Awful things happen to anybody who loves me," Becky says, raising her head for the first time; there's tear tracks on her face, but restraint in her tone. "First my whole family, and then Unc- Jack, what's going to happen to you?"

"I'm not going to leave you like your uncle did," Jack says, with so much disgust in his tone that Becky slaps him. He lets her.

She starts crying again, her head against his shoulder, "I miss him. I miss him so much."

"So do I. Which is just one more reason why I'm not going anywhere, Becky, you understand that? That's a promise."

"Suppose a sixteen-wheeler bumps into you one of these days?"

"Then you will know," Jack says, very quietly, "that I did my damnedest to fight my way back home for you. Besides, remember what I do for a living? Chances are pretty good I walk away from any crash, even if I caused it myself."

Becky lets out a half-chuckle, shoves off some of the blankets. "He was just the perfect uncle though, you know? Sweet, and interested in everything that I was interested in, and good at fixing anything up to and including a broken heart- I just doted on him so much. He made up for losing everything, and- and now that he's gone, I just don't know if I've got it in me to even try again. I really don't."

"You know what the terrible thing is about grief?" Jack asks, gazing up at the ceiling.

"What?"

"You get over it. One of these days you will- I know it doesn't feel like that, but you will. You'll want things again, you'll need them, and it will be okay- as long as you don't feel bad about it," Jack says. "It's okay to grieve, Beck, as long as you need to. But don't guilt yourself into feeling bad because you think you ought to. That kind of hurting won't do you any good at all."

"...I guess you're right," Becky says, sniffing. "But I still miss him so much."

"I know."

"And it's not like I'm doing you much good," she says eventually. "Hogging space in here, and making a nuisance of myself, and everything."

"Eh, this place was pretty messy even before you got here," Jack says lightly. "Don't worry about any of that, okay? Now. Brown sugar sauce, and then I think we give the ham another twenty minutes."

She smiles a little wanly, but gets up, pours out the sludgy brown sauce while Jack steadies the pan.

"I guess things could always be worse-"

The pounding on the door takes them both off-guard; Jack opens the door calmly enough, but almost crumples at the sight.

"Hello, Ellen," he says, voice hardly above a whisper.

Ellen is looking well; her face freshly made-up, thick mink wrapped around her neck. "Hello, Becky. I've come to take you home."

Becky dives back into her blanket cocoon, furious. "I am home."

"Somewhere you'll be taken care of properly," Ellen offers. "Not this place, a real house where you can have your own room and everything. Becky, your uncle should never have done that to you, but I've come to make it up to you. As much as I can."

"You can't," Becky says, stubbornly. "Unc always hated you anyway, and maybe he was dumb about a lot of stuff, but I just bet he was right there. Anyway, Jack's taking care of me. And he loves me, which is more than you would."

"We rushed the court guardianship papers," Ellen says to Jack. "Just in time for a Christmas miracle. Tell her she's coming with me."

Jack bows his head, looking utterly defeated. "See, I can't. I made a promise to this kid, okay? That I'd look after her whatever it took- so if you think I'm just going to roll over and let you walk out with her, you'll have another think coming."

"Yay," Becky murmurs, hugging him.

"Carrot or stick, Dalton, it's your choice," Ellen says with exasperation. "I'll give you a payoff to get out of town, conditional on your leaving tonight. Otherwise we'll call in the police and you can spend Christmas day in jail instead. So think twice before you do anything stupid."

Jack mutters something, quietly enough for it to be drowned out by a cavernous rumbling from under his jacket. Ellen leans forward, amused. "You said what?"

"I said no," Jack says, blushing hotly. "Her parents aren't here for her, her uncle sure isn't- so I guess it's just me. And if you lock me up, you lock me up, but I want her to know- I want you to know for sure, Becky, that I'll be fighting for you if nobody else will. You deserve that, believe it. Believe me, please."

"I will," Becky says, and lets a long and thoughtful pause go by before adding, "Unc."

"How dare you," Ellen snaps, with all the loathing of a cheated mother, and the look she turns on Jack is so malicious, so entirely cruel and self-centered, that the very injustice of it jolts Mac out of his complacency, passive observer, brings him screeching back to earth-

he is in a bed, very drunk, with his ex perched eagerly over him.

"Only I'm so lonely," Ellen says, and waits eagerly for his reply.

Somewhere in the back of his head there's still a calm, rational part of him that knows what sense is, and that part's enticed by this situation. If that part was in charge, anything might happen.

But it's not. His body's running on instinct at this point, and instinct right now means exhaustion and giddiness and a numbed inability to disentangle this Ellen, the one in front of him, from the one who was just giving him nightmares. "I'm gonna throw up."

He doesn't, actually, but the sight of him retching into her designer wastepaper basket seems to turn her off but good. She watches with complete dismay, revulsion even.

(A glass of water would have been nice. Jack would have brought him a glass of water.)

Once he's got himself under something like control again, he leans over and starts putting his boots on. "Can I borrow your phone? Only I think I'd better call a cab."

"Downstairs by the French windows," Ellen says; and doesn't bother even following him to the door.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"You brought me tequila!"

"I promised, didn't I?" Mac says; and finds himself smiling as Jack helps him into the cab. At least somebody got something good out of this.

"I'm kinda surprised, to be honest. You look terrible."

"Mmm. Drunk. Also pretty hungry."

"Bad combination," Jack says sagely. "I had a hunch she wouldn't feed you. Becky's kept some dinner hot."

"I thought she'd be in bed by now."

"I let her stay up. Christmas Eve and all that, you know? And she said she didn't want to go to bed till you came home."

"I might not have," Mac murmurs; and Jack chuckles.

"Beck knows you better than that. Try to freshen up, all right? It's one thing rolling in looking like hell warmed over, but you can at least straighten your hair a bit."

"Maybe I like messy hair," he counters; but finger-combs it a bit in the mirror. He's feeling better now; the fresh smell of air after rain is doing a lot to calm him down. No snow for Christmas, probably; but still, things could be worse. Things could always be worse.

"Suppose anything happened to me, would you look after Becky for me?"

"Weird question," Jack says. "Why would Becky want to be looked after by me? But if she did- yeah, in a heartbeat. You know that perfectly well, Mac- or you do when you're not drunk."

"Thanks," Mac says, and slumps over. Jack clicks his tongue.

"And don't fall asleep on the driver, okay...okay, guess he's not listening. Oh well. Good thing Becky is awake," he adds, to the unconscious barista. "You think I'd want to carry you into the house all by myself? No way."

He says it quietly, though. The cheerful relief on Mac's face suggests a dream too good to wake him from; a lot better than he'd looked after stumbling out of the Jerico place, that's for sure. By Christmas this'll be no more than a bad dream and a hangover.

(And he gets Mac to himself, for a little longer anyway. Hah!)

"Merry Christmas, amigo," Jack murmurs, and turns the scratchy car radio to full ("Hark the Herald Angels Sing), as he revs up the cab towards Becky and home.


End file.
